YSR Congress Party MLA and official spokesperson Ambati Rambabu has said the party decided not to attend the meeting of political parties called by the State Election Commissioner N. Ramesh Kumar on local body polls as it suspected that the SEC might have “ulterior motives”.
In a letter, Mr. Rambabu said the SEC should have waited for the Supreme Court judgment, and said that the apex court had stated that the SEC should consider the views expressed by the State Government before going ahead with the poll process. He wondered why the SEC was going ahead with the process without consulting either the Chief Secretary or the Medical and Health Secretary on whether it was possible to conduct local body elections. This shows that the SEC has a different agenda and hence the party decided to keep off the meeting, he said.
He said that the SEC move to hold one-on-one discussions with parties without holding discussions with the State government or the Chief Secretary on the feasibility of holding the polls, was part of a ploy being played by Mr. Ramesh Kumar and N. Chandrababu Naidu.
MR. Rambabu claimed the motive of the meeting in calling parties that do not command any vote base in the State would soon be exposed.
He questioned why the SEC postponed the polls when there were less than three COVID-19 cases in the State but was ready to hold he polls when the State was registering 3,000 cases a day. Mr. Rambabu exuded confidence that the YSRCP would win all the seats in the elections.
“We are saying that Mr. Ramesh Kumar considers the conduct of elections to be a drama rather than a sacred constitutional duty,” he alleged.
