Andhra’s “peaceful” polls produced 13 repolls
The DGP cited 41 election-related incidents; the SEC later found booth capture at stations sent back to voters.
The clean-election description met the repoll order.
The TDP government in Andhra Pradesh had a tidy description for the November 1 urban local-body polls: “largely peaceful”. The paperwork has since produced 13 stations that voters must do again.
According to a police release cited by DGP Harish Kumar Gupta, police received information about 41 election-related incidents in 20 districts. Officials were ordered to verify them, identify those responsible and initiate legal action. The DGP also said polling was peaceful apart from “a few minor incidents”. The phrase was doing more work than the police file.
The State Election Commission subsequently ordered repolling at 13 polling stations across seven urban local bodies after concluding that booth capture had occurred at the affected stations. Four of those stations are in Pulivendula. The other repoll locations reported were Jammalamadugu, Kadapa, Macherla, Anantapur, Tirupati and Chimakurthy. The SEC’s reported final turnout was 60.96%, and it said complaints from political parties would be examined.
Pulivendula also saw clashes and attacks on journalists. A police case was reported after journalists were allegedly assaulted and equipment damaged. YSRCP president Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy alleged that party agents were kept out of nearly 70 of the town’s 80 polling stations and sought a wider repoll. That figure remains an allegation, not an established count. The TDP side blamed YSRCP workers for the violence and said the election was conducted freely.
Most polling areas may have been calm. That does not make booth capture at 13 stations a minor incident; it makes “largely peaceful” an official description with a conspicuous asterisk. The TDP government’s problem is not that every booth was chaotic. It is that its clean-election story lasted until the election authority checked the booths that mattered.