If the reports doing rounds in the media circles are to be believed, the exercise for conducting elections to zilla parishad and mandal parishads in Andhra Pradesh will be completed by April 20.
Former chief secretary Neelam Sawhney, who has been newly-appointed as the state election commissioner in place of Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar on his retirement on Thursday, will assume the charge on Friday.
According to these reports, Neelam will immediately take up the process of conducting elections to the pending mandal parishad territorial constituencies (MPTCs) and zilla parishad territorial constituencies (ZPTCs).
After taking stock of the situation in a day or two, she is expected to announce the schedule for the MPTC and ZPTC polls. The process will begin where it ended in March 2020: withdrawal of nominations.
“Immediately, the campaign will start for the elections and the polling is likely to by April 15 and the results would be declared by April 20,” the reports said.
However, there is also a talk that the polling might be held only after April 17, when the by-election to Tirupati parliamentary seat. In any case, the process would be over by the end of April third week.
It is learnt Jagan wants to hurry up the ZPTC and MPTC polls because of the increasing number of Covid-19 cases gradually.
“He doesn’t want the last year’s situation to be repeated and the elections are postponed if the Centre orders reimposition of lockdown,” sources said.
Another reason why the Jagan government wants to expedite the election process is to ensure that the vaccination process be speeded up. Since the village volunteers would be busy with the vaccination exercise, their services cannot be utilised in the elections.
There are in all, 660 ZPTCs and 9,984 MPTCs in Andhra Pradesh, of which as many as 126 ZPTCs and 2,363 MPTCs were elected unanimous during the beginning of the election process in March 2020.
