Naidu’s 25,809 nominations came with six rounds in the air
The YSRCP was not shut out statewide, but clashes, missing candidates and Supreme Court intervention leave Andhra’s civic polls looking less than clean.
A large nomination count, and a process still under examination.
Andhra Pradesh’s urban local-body nomination process produced 25,809 filings across 100 bodies. It also produced clashes, police firing in the air and a Supreme Court direction to examine whether candidates were prevented from filing. Calling that a clean election requires a very selective relationship with arithmetic.
The State Election Commission’s reported figures included 24,451 ward nominations and 1,358 mayoral and chairperson nominations. The YSRCP filed 8,175 ward nominations statewide and 367 nominations for mayoral or chairperson posts. The party was therefore not erased from the contest, despite its claim that candidates were blocked in parts of the state. Polling is scheduled for October 28 and counting for October 30. [1]
But participation is not the same thing as a level playing field. In four Kadapa-area urban local bodies, reports said the YSRCP filed no candidate for the chairperson post and no ward candidates; in Kadapa Municipal Corporation, it reportedly filed in only 16 of 66 divisions. In Pulivendula, police fired six rounds in the air and used tear gas after stone-pelting, according to the police account. Around 70 people were reportedly booked after clashes in the region. The Andhra Pradesh High Court had already directed the State Election Commission to permit filing at collectorates or district election offices in eligible cases. [2]
The Supreme Court then said the YSRCP had made out a prima facie case that some candidates were prevented from filing nominations, directed the SEC to consider its representations and ordered that the final candidate list not be published immediately. That is not a final finding of statewide coercion. It is also not the sort of judicial intervention that accompanies an entirely uneventful process. [3]
Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu responded that nominations were filed freely and said violence was “deeply embedded in their DNA”. The YSRCP alleged attacks, intimidation and administrative obstruction. Both sides have supplied more certainty than the record can presently carry. The TDP government has managed to produce a substantial nomination count and a process serious enough for the Supreme Court to stop and inspect. For an administration claiming normality, that is a poor report card.