Political parties set for showdown on local and non-local nativity factor

ADILABAD: On the one hand, political parties have brought the issue of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh to provoke the people, while on the other, the issue of local and non-local candidates have come to the fore in the erstwhile Adilabad district.

A social media post in which a retired IAS officer, who is planning to contest in the next elections from Khanapur Assembly constituency, has flummoxed  locals as claims that ‘he was son of the soil unlike others in contention and was familiar with the problems faced by the local people'.  

Local leaders and ticket aspirants have started raising the issue of local and non-local. Sitting TRS Khanapur MLA Rekha Naik and former MP Rathod Ramesh of the BJP have been fighting on this very issue for a long time now.

Ironically, a video went viral on social media in which both Naik and Rathod quarrelled with each other. One alleges that Naik was a native of Karnataka while the other says Rathod family originally belonged to Maharashtra.

Ticket aspirants of Congress, BJP, and Congress from Komaram Bheem Asifabad district are strongly opposing leaders of other constituencies, who were planning to contest from Asifabad, which is reserved for STs.

The High Court had in December 2013 declared that the sitting MLA Suman Rathod, wife of Ramesh Rathod, was not eligible to contest from the ST constituency as she had migrated to Adilabad and was from Maharashtra where lambadas are in the BCs category.

Rekha Naik criticized Ramesh Rathod for his remarks during the Praja Sangrama yatra that she had returned to Khanapur from Dubai.

In the Boath Assembly constituency the issue of local and non-local has cropped up within the TRS. The issue was raised in Sirpur (T) constituency by BJP leader Palvai Harish Babu.

Meanwhile, some leaders have constructed houses in Adilabad town to become locals as their native villages were merged into other mandals and went into Boath Assembly constituency.