The TDP on Thursday made an appeal to the Election Commission of India (ECI) to depute special officers of All-India Service (AIS) from outside the State to ensure error-free registration of electoral rolls in Andhra Pradesh.
Party MPs, Galla Jayadev, Kanakamedala Ravindra Kumar, Kinerapu Ram Mohan Naidu and Kesineni Nani, on Thursday met Chief Election Commissioner, Raiv Kumar, and in a letter submitted to him said that the District Election Officers (DEOs) and Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) could not follow the ECI guidelines as they are under heavy pressure from the ruling party leaders, including the Cabinet Ministers and the MLAs. Referring to the representations submitted to the ECI earlier by former chief minister and TDP supremo, Nara Chandrababu Naidu, and TDP State unit president, Kinerapu Atchen Naidu, the TDP MPs said in the letter that at least 6,000 false cases have been foisted against the senior TDP leaders in the past 57 months which reflects the tyrannical rule in the State.
Mentioning that literally there is a state of undeclared emergency in the State under the YSRCP rule, the MPs thanked the ECI for promptly responding to the representations made by their party earlier. Unfortunately, the field machinery, instead of correcting the mistakes in the electoral rolls, is taking a casual approach and passing on the responsibility to the lower officers. This apart, the politically vulnerable and inexperienced Sachivalayam staff members, are appointed as Block Level Officers (BLOs) are playing havoc with the revision process under directions from the local YSRCP leaders, they informed the ECI.
Though the ECI through its letter on May 29 this year clearly passed instructions that all the advanced applications received by October 1 are processed so that all the corresponding entries are amalgamated in the draft rolls, over 23 lakh applications are yet to be inquired by the election machinery. Expressing apprehensions that the EROs may not complete the process before the publication of final rolls, the TDP MPs made an appeal to the ECI in the letter to deploy external observers to monitor the whole process.
“We have recently brought to the notice of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) that an IAS officer who is appointed as an observer is closely related to a Minister in the State Cabinet and made a request to replace him as we can not expect proper supervision and preparation of error-free rolls,” the MPs said. Despite raising objections, the EROs are issuing notices to voters on a large scale without varying the admissibility of objections as per the norms, they said.
The political leaders involved in the election offences are not punished as per the law for blatant violation of norms, they said and expressed apprehensions that in the absence of severe penal action against such culprits, the leaders are emboldened to perpetuate such acts in the ongoing process. In view of the unprecedented political pressure on the EROs and BLOs the process of special summary revision of electoral rolls has become a mockery and thus the TDP is constrained to continuously write letters to various officials.
Observing that the grievances expressed by the TDP are going unheeded as the lower-rung machinery is under clutches of the party in-power, the TDP MPs made a fervent appeal to the poll panel to immediately depute senior AIS officers from outside Andhra Pradesh as observers to ensure thorough and dispassionate processing of all pending applications.
These officers may also be directed to examine and evaluate the work done till now with regard to the draft rolls already published, the MPs and sought an immediate intervention of the Election Commission of India to protect the democratic rights of the citizens of the State.
