Naidu Says People’s Support Helped Alliance To Fare Better In Local Body Polls

Vijayawada: Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has said that the TD-led alliance performed better in the recently held local body elections, compared to the 2024 polls, as the people trusted his government.

“The landslide we got was by way of a people’s recognition of the government’s welfare, development-oriented good governance,” he asserted here.

Addressing the media from his camp office on Monday, Naidu said, “I always believe that good politics leads to good governance which ends in people’s trust.

People appreciated the welfare, development and good governance being provided by this government in the last 2.5 years and gave a huge majority to us in the local body elections.”

“We have minimised the role of money in the elections so that the elected leaders will be more accountable to the people.

If the contestants give money to the voters and get elected, they will in turn look for getting back the money they spent in the elections in a short period and become corrupt,” he said.

Naidu said the alliance got 58.9 per cent vote share in the local body elections while it had secured 55.3 per cent vote share in 2024 election -- showing a marginal increase of 3.6 per cent in the local body elections.

Referring to the opposition YSR Congress, he said that it got a vote share of 39.81 per cent in the 2024 polls and 33.56 per cent in local body elections -- meaning a decline of 6.25 per cent.

He said the alliance registered a strike rate of 94 per cent in urban local body elections and 57.6 per cent in MPTC/ZPTC elections while the opposition secured 39.7 per cent with a strike rate of 87.5 per cent.

The difference in vote share between the alliance and the YSR Congress stood at 25.6 per cent in urban areas and 17.9 per cent in rural areas, he said.

As for postal ballots in the urban body elections, the NDA secured 65.7 per cent while the YSR Congress 27.42 per cent.

In parishad elections, the NDA got a vote share of 62.83 per cent while YSR Congress got 31.46 per cent, indicating the larger support being extended by the employees to the NDA, the CM claimed.

On rural local body elections, he said that the NDA won 575 out of a total of 659 ZPTC seats in the state and secured a lead in 27 districts out of 28 districts.

The YSR Congress won more ZPTC seats than the NDA in Alluri Sitaram Raju district, Naidu said, and noted that the YSR Congress failed to win even a single ZPTC seat in seven districts--Anakapalli, Konaseema, Kakianda, Markapuram, Palnadu, West Godavari and Visakhapatnam.

In MPTC elections, the NDA won 7,803 out of a total of 9,818 seats, he said.

The CM said that in urban local body elections, the NDA won 94 posts of mayor and chairperson out of a total of 100, including 12 positions of mayor out of 13 and 82 positions of chairperson out of a total of 87.

The TD won 70 mayor and chairperson positions followed by Jana Sena with 20 and BJP four.

Among wards, the NDA won 3,233 out of a total of 3,941 wards, registering a win of 82 per cent.

NDA also won council majorities in 95 of the 100 ULBs and won every ward in 16 ULBs.

However, the YSR Congress won only four ULBs and secured just 558 out of 3,941 wards and it failed to win even a single ward in 22 ULBs, Naidu noted.

The CM said the alliance had ensured adequate representation to the SC, ST, BC, women and minority communities for the positions of mayor, chairperson etc.

He noted that out of 70 mayors and chairpersons elected from the TD, 42 were women accounting for 60 per cent representation while women would head eight out of 10 mayor positions from the TD in Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram, Machilipatnam, Guntur, Ongole, Kadapa, Kurnool and Chittoor.

Moreover, out of 70 TD elected mayors and chairpersons, 44 belonging to SC, ST, BC and minority communities, providing them 62.9 per cent representation while the community-wise representation included BCs-25, SCs-9, minorities-9 and ST-one.

Naidu said that the TDP had given opportunity to 27 communities as mayors and chairpersons, demonstrating the party’s commitment to social justice.

Out of 10 TDP mayors, BCs had 4, OCs 4, SC one and minorities one.

“We gave opportunity to those having higher educational qualifications, those who were young in age and those from diverse backgrounds like the poor, daily wage workers and those having no political knowledge,” he said.

The chief minister said, “The NDA’s political experiment yielded excellent results and we have groomed the new leadership to serve the party and the state for another 30 years.”