There is hardly four months’ time left for the political parties to gear up for the assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh, if one were to go by the indications given by state chief electoral officer Mukesh Kumar Meena.
Meena told media persons on Friday that the notification for the conduct of elections in Andhra Pradesh is likely to be issued in March and the final list of voters would be released by January 1. If what he said is correct, the elections will be held either in the last week of March or the first week of April.
If the notification for the elections is issued in March, the election schedule will definitely be announced at least three weeks before the issuance of the notification, as was done in the case of assembly elections in Telangana and four other states.
So, the schedule for the AP assembly elections will be announced in the second week, or at the most, third week of February and the model code of conduct will come into force immediately.
It does mean, the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government is left with less than four months to do whatever it can to appease the voters and win back their confidence, so that the YSR Congress party comes back to power for a second term.
For the Telugu Desam Party, it is all the more a tricky situation, as there is a lot of uncertainty over the fate of its president N Chandrababu Niadu, who is still in jail in connection with the skill development scam.
One doesn’t know when he comes out and even if he does in a week or two, it is not known how many days he will take to recover from the shock so as to take a plunge into action. And there is no guarantee that he will be thrown behind the bars again in one case or another.
Lokesh, who has suspended his Yuvagalam padayatra, is also in a state of confusion as to how to go about with preparing the party for the elections.
His party leaders are confined just to issuing press statements or addressing press conferences, but none of them is taking initiative to go into the people.
The exercise on forging an alliance with the Jana Sena Party is still in the nascent stage and the seat sharing talks are yet to begin. And nobody knows what kind of situation will prevail in both the parties if there is a seat sharing.
So, it’s time for the parties to hurry up with their exercise of preparing for the assembly elections in the right earnest!
