Hyderabad, February 18, 2013: Welcoming the Supreme Court verdict directing the State
Government to conduct elections to the local bodies, YSR Congress has demanded
that the polls should be held on party basis.
“Going against the spirit of the decentralization of political power,
the State went on postponing the election on one flimsy ground or the other and
deprived the weaker sections of funds to a tune of Rs 4,000 crores during the
past two years,’ party spokesperson Gattu Ramachandra Rao told reporters here
on Monday.
“Our leader YS Jagana Mohan Reddy had written a letter in June 2011
itself seeking elections to local bodies as that is the forum which is
represented heavily by backward classes but the State did not take up the
exercise as it feared that it would be routed in the elections,” he said.
The state had shown feeble grounds to postpone the elections but our
leader YS Jagan Mohan Reddy had suggested that hitch of 50 per cent
reservations to BCs can be solved by calling an All Party Meeting and have a
consensus on allotting general seats to backward classes to bring parity and
political empowerment to the marginalized sections of the society, he said.
The Congress government did not take initiative and in the process
nearly Rs 4,000 crores of funds have lapsed as there was no elected
representatives to the local bodies and the show is been run by officials, he
said.
We demand that the elections to local bodies should be conducted on the
basis of party symbol as we have seen the huge misappropriation in the just
concluded cooperative polls.
Congress has delayed the election process to local bodies and did not
respond properly to the legal tangle as it feared that it will be wiped away in
the direct elections, he said adding that the government’s delay was not in the
spirit of decentralisation of power nor in tune with the constitutional rights
of the Panchayat Raj Act amendment.
The Congress government should be answerable to the lapse of funds for
developmental activities as the elections were stalled for two-and-a-half
years, he said adding that even the main opposition TDP did not raise the issue
as it also feared that it is in a bad situation. The two parties have again
jointly worked to keep the local bodies elections at bay as they have no hope
of winning seats.
He also demanded that adequate compensation should be paid to the
farmers who lost their crops in the heavy rains.
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