YSRCP demands local bodies polls on party symbol

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 decentralisation 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 Jagan 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.
-Sakshipost