TRS afraid of panchayat elections: Kishna Reddy

The Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday alleged that the TRS government has deliberately postponed panchayat elections because it fears it will lose.BJP floor leader in the Legislative Assembly, G Kishna Reddy  said that though the term of the existing panchayats will expire this month, the state government has made no effort to conduct the elections in time.

Addressing a press conference here, Mr Reddy said that Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had announced in the Assembly in March that the government will hold panchayat elections as scheduled and the question of postponing elections does not arise.

“The reality seems to be different as the TRS government is deliberately trying to postpone the elections on one pretext or the other. It brought in a new panchayat raj Act in haste without consulting Opposition parties or other stakeholders. It passed an erroneous Act deliberately so that it would face legal problems and elections will be postponed. As expected, the elections have been stuck in legal disputes and postponed indefinitely. The state government has failed on all fronts in the past four years and fears that it will lose in the polls as people are angry,” Mr Reddy alleged.

He criticised the decision of the state government to appoint special officers to all panchayats from Aug-ust as being against the spirit of the Constitution and democracy.

“This shows TRS has no respect for democracy or panchayat raj system. The Indian panchayat raj system is known to be the strongest in the world. Unfortunately, the TRS government is now trying to dilute this system and appoint special officers. Rural people will be denied the chance to be part of the democratic process at ground level and elect their own sarpanches. There will be no mechanism to address the issues faced by people in rural areas as special officers will not be accessible to the public, unlike sarpanches,” Mr Reddy said.

He demanded that the state government take immediate measures to vacate the stay granted by the High Court on panchayat elections and hold the elections on time.