Opposition discourages YSRC’s move to make PR polls unanimous

TIRUPATI: The hopes of the ruling YSR Congress to make the Panchayat Raj polls unanimous might be dashed as several candidates from various political parties as also independents have filed nominations for the Sarpanch posts ahead of the phase-1 polls.

Despite the stand-off between the SEC and the state government, the ruling YSRC hoped to make the panchayat polls unanimous. The government has announced financial incentives to encourage unanimous polls, saying this would enable village panchayats to concentrate more on development works.

However, the Opposition parties — the Telugu Desam and the BJP-Janasena NDA alliance — this time appeared stronger and went ahead with the filing of nominations. The parties have fielded candidates for all posts, even as they continued to trade allegations over intimidation of their candidates by rival parties.

According to reports, 19,491 nominations were filed for sarpanch posts and 79,799 for ward member posts for the phase-1 polls. In all, the tail-end Chittoor district saw the highest number of nominations filed for the sarpanch post, followed by East Godavari and Visakhapatnam districts.

In Chittoor district, unlike last year, a majority of panchayats are now set to witness a keen contest, as large numbers of candidates have filed nominations. Out of the 467 panchayats and 4,289 wards in the Chittoor division, about 454 panchayats and 4142 wards are going to polls in the first phase.

In March last year, out of the 858 MPTC seats and 65 ZPTC seats in the district, the ruling party managed to secure 323 MPTC seats and 29 ZPTC seats unopposed.

“At that time, we had struggled to make our presence felt in the local elections because of certain difficulties to field candidates amidst the ruling party’s vindictive attitude and other reasons. Now, the ground situation has completely changed since all the misdeeds of the YSRC were exposed. We decided to expose the anti-government resentment among the public by securing the highest number of sarpanch posts”, a TD leader said.