Election Commission directive hits Andhra Pradesh scheme

Vijayawada: The AP government’s scheme offering free bicycles to girl students has to be shelved given the orders of the Election Commission of India based on Delhi HC judgement.

In a writ petition concerning the BSP, Election Commission of India (ECI) recently issued directions that no political party should either use or allow the use of any public funds or public place or government machinery for carrying out any activity that would amount to advertisement for the party or propagate the election symbol allotted to the party.

The cycle is Telugu Desam’s symbol. TD was to distribute cycles to students in government-aided and municipal schools to mark the completion of two-years of TD government in the state as per its election promise of 2014 elections. In all 13 districts, as many as 1.80 lakh girl students were identified.

However, Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu in a teleconference on Thursday, unaware of the EC order, asked officials to distribute cycles to decrease dropout rates.

In addition to TD’s election promise, a girl at the TD Mahanadu held in Tirupati in May 2016, had requested the Chief Minister in her speech to give free cycles to girl students. She recollected that, while she was studying, she had got a free bicycle from the then TD government and she used to go to school on the cycle. Now she has completed here PG. She requested that the scheme be implemented again so that many girl students can avail this opportunity to study in schools.

The dropout rate among girls is high as parents are not willing to send th-eir wards to schools outside their village without a proper mode of transport. Following this, the AP Cabinet at its meeting of June 1, 2016 approved distribution of bicycles to girl students of Class IX in government aided and municipal schools.

According to a senior official from the school education department, the bicycles are at the stage of being delivered from manufacturers. The state government had allocated Rs 74.92 crore for the implementation of the scheme Badiki Vastha. He added, “I don’t know whether the EC directive has been noticed by the government. But we shall move forward in distributing the bicycle for the girls of Class IX as we were instructed by the Chief Minister.” He mentioned that they will complete the distribution process at the earliest.

Now the officials said that they would take this to the notice of the Chief Minister to make a decision on this.