BJP State president Kanna Lakshminarayana on Thursday said that Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy appeared to have resolved to make the elections to the local bodies unanimous in favour of the YSRCP by physically attacking the opponents and blackmailing them.
Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy would have captured the local bodies by bringing about an Ordinance, or simply by nominating his candidates as was done in respect of cooperative societies had the government not been under compulsion to mobilise funds from the Central government as per the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments, he observed.
Addressing the media along with his party’s State affairs in-charge Sunil Deodhar and JSP president Pawan Kalyan before releasing the alliance’s vision document (manifesto) for the local bodies’ elections here, Mr. Lakshminarayana alleged that Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy warned the Ministers and MLAs that they would lose their job if they did not ensure the ruling party’s victory in the elections, and the violent incidents taking place across the State were a result of that threat.
‘Dictatorship’
Mr. Lakshminarayana said he had never seen such unruly scenes during the local body elections in his political career spanning more than four decades, and described what was being seen as a combination of “dictatorship and factionalism.”
Mr. Lakshminarayana said complaints to the State Election Commission (SEC) and the police evoked no response. Even if the candidates of the BJP, the JSP and other parties managed to file the papers, they were being rejected on flimsy grounds, he alleged.
If the people vote for the BJP-JSP alliance, it would put an end to the “anarchic rule of the YSRCP,” he asserted.
Mr. Pawan Kalyan said both the YSRCP and the TDP had no respect for democracy. While the former was conducting elections to the local bodies in a one-sided manner, the latter had completely avoided the elections during its term, he added.
He stated that if the SEC remained a mute spectator to the disturbances, its silence would be construed as encouraging criminalisation of politics.
BJP leaders D. Purandeswari, P.V.N. Madhav, Somu Veerraju and P. Manikyala Rao, and JSP’s Nadendla Manohar and P. Ramamohan Rao were among those present.