Hyderabad: For the first time in Andhra Pradesh, local body elections will be held very close to the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, and political parties are apprehensive that the declaration of results of the local body elections will influence voting in the general elections.
The results for the local body polls will be announced on April 10. The Assembly elections and Parliamentary elections will be held less than a month afterwards.
The only known instance of local body polls being held so close to the Assembly elections occurred in Karnataka last year, when urban local body polls preceded the Assembly polls by three months. The Cong-ress, which was in the Opposition, secured a majority in the urban body elections followed by the Janata Dal (S) and the ruling BJP. In the Assembly elections that followed three months later, the verdict was almost the same.
Political leaders of all parties have therefore asked the State Election Commission to defer the declaration of results of the earlier election. But the commission has not complied.
“We cannot put the declaration of election results on hold. It is very difficult to keep ballot boxes under tight security due to non-availability of police personnel who will be deputed to general election duties by then,” said SEC secretary, Navin Mittal.
Barring the GHMC, all municipal bodies in the state will have one-day polling, on March 30, and the results will be out on April 2. All the MPTC and ZPTC bodies will have two-phase polling, on April 6 and 8, and counting will be taken up on April 8. This means the entire electorate for the general elections, barring GHMC, will participate either in urban or rural local body polls, and their choice of political party will be known just as the filing of nominations for the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections gets underway. Filing of nomination papers for Assembly and Lok Sabha constituencies in Telangana will be from April 2 to 9, and for Seemandhra constituencies it will be from April 12 to 19.
Telugu Desam MP, Sujana Chowdary, said, “We are confident the TD will sweep the local body polls as well as the General Elections. We are not afraid of the outcome, but impact on general polls will be there.”
Telangana Rashtra Samiti’s Harish Rao said, “We are confident of winning a majority of seats in both the polls but when the Central Election Commission has banned the publishing of pre-poll surveys and exit polls, how can the SEC officially declare results? It will have an impact on the General Election.”
YSR Congress leader Dr M.V. Mysoora Reddy says voters can vote differently in the two sets of elections and his party is not worried about the disclosure of results.
“Both elections are different and fought on different grounds. People may change their preference according to their wisdom based on other aspects,” he said.
