HYDERABAD: The Congress government is likely to announce local body polls ahead of the byelections to 18 Assembly and one Lok Sabha seat in a bid to deflect people’s attention away from its discomfiture in the face of the challenge posed by YS Jagan Mohan Reddy. Congress hopes this will defuse Jagan’s propaganda fallout and help the party save face to some extent. It is expected that the tactic would require Jagan to expand his focus to the entire state. This decision was taken at a meting of 15 ministers called by chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy at his camp office.“It is not clear when the notification for the bypolls would be issued. Let us first complete the elections to cooperative and local bodies,” a minister quoted the chief minister as saying. Almost all ministers agreed to this and wanted the chief minister to go ahead with his plan.There is, however, a technical problem. The state government wanted to hold local body elections as per 2011 census. “We understood the latest census details will be made available only after six months to one year. So, we wanted the chief minister to hold elections with 2001 census,” a minister said, adding Kiran Kumar Reddy, deputy chief minister Damodar Rajanarasimha and PCC chief Botcha Satyanarayana would discuss the matter further and take a decision.The government wanted to hold the elections for local bodies based on 2011 census and made a plea to the AP High Court to this effect. In January this year, the government submitted to the High Court that it cannot hold the elections basing on 2011 census till the registrar general and census commissioner of India publishes the latest figures.Speaking on behalf of the government, advocate general A Sudarshan Reddy had then argued that the entire population figures, as per the latest census, were not available and if reservation of seats for SC and STs was finalised with 2001 data, it would deprive those sections of the opportunities that should go to them legitimately. After the meeting with the chief minister, the decision was clear: the government wants to hold the elections based on 2001 census. Since the government argued against this in the court, it would now file another petition seeking court permission.The ruling party will have its own advantages in conducting cooperative elections first. It had always won a majority of seats in cooperative polls, which might help it face Assembly byelections better.Local body and cooperative elections before Assembly bypolls mean YS Jagan Mohan Reddy has to shift his attention to the entire state. Thus, his concentration on 18 Assembly segments would be disturbed, which is expected to help Congress. “A political gameplan will always be like that,” a minister said.Meanwhile, chief electoral Officer Banwarlal said in New Delhi that cooperative and local body elections had nothing to do with Assembly bypolls. Congress can devise plans in such a way that there will be too little gap between the two byelections, so that Jagan would have little time to focus on Assembly polls.
Comments
0 comment