Vijayawada: AP Chief Minister and TD supremo N. Chandrababu Naidu on Friday met Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora at New Delhi to express his discontent over the conduct of the Election Commission in the recent Lok Sabha and Assembly elections held in his state.
He condemned the functioning of an independent autonomous body like the Election Commission in the ongoing elections to the Lok Sabha and Andhra Pradesh Assembly. He opposed proposed re-polling in the five polling booths of Chandragiri constituency after 34 days of the completion of polling. He also termed it as “totally unconstitutional and against the code of election”. A formal complaint in this regard has been handed over in person by Mr Naidu on Friday to the CEC.
The AP CM termed the action initiated by the election commission as “totally outrageous and biased”. According to him, while the requests for re-polling in certain constituencies in 9 polling booths made earlier by TD were ignored, a recent complaint by YSRC, was upheld and re-polling ordered.
He questioned the reasons behind not sharing the IP address details of Form 7 name deletions by YSRC from the voter’s list in AP. He accused the BJP of favouring the YSRC in the AP State Election with a vested interest.
He also brought up “the unilateral and partial treatment being meted out to certain political parties at the behest of the Central Government”. “The recent transfer of the officials of the Home Department in West Bengal was one such glaring incident,” he said. He advised the EC to follow due process in verifying the facts before ordering re-polling. “An impartial and sincere conduct of free and fair elections is the due responsibility of the Election Commission”, he emphasized.
Many political parties in the country had complained of irregularities with respect to the conduct of elections in their respective states, which had been totally disregarded, he said.
He also strongly condemned the comments of Sadhvi Pragya Thakur, and questioned as to why no action was taken by the EC in this matter.
