The war between State Election Commissioner Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar and the state government is not over as it appears.
The war is on and it saw some fireworks on Thursday evening, with Nimmagadda posting senior IAS officer Maddada Ravichandra as SEC secretary, a post that fell vacant after Nimmagadda surrendered Vani Mohan to the state government.
Nimmagadda had set communication to the chief secretary about Ravichandra’s appointment in the late evening.
However, minutes after the communication, the state government had appointed Ravichandra as special secretary to the government taking care of Covid 19 vaccination.
The government also sent a panel of three names – G S R K R Vijaya Kumar, K Kanna Babu and P Raja Babu – to the SEC to appoint any one of them as secretary as Ravichandra is unavailable and indispensable.
This decision of the state government might irk Nimmagadda as his decision too had annoyed the government equally or even greater.
It was only two days ago that Nimmagadda had said that ‘past is past’ and he wanted to focus on conduct of the elections successfully.
He also stated that he had good relations with the officers and employees and working for elections would not be a problem anymore.
However, one wonders what made Nimmagadda to make appointments as he desires without even consulting the state government or the chief secretary.
He had already appointed a senior IPS officer N Sanjay as special officer to monitor the unanimous elections in the Gram Panchayats.
Though Nimmagadda made this appointment without giving a word to the state government, the government did not respond.
However, the government responded sharply to the second appointment that Nimmagadda made on Thursday and left no choice for the SEC.
It is now to be seen what Nimmagadda would do in this case. Will he accept the panel and pick up one or insist on Ravichandra for the secretary post, is what matters to see whether the war is on or closed.
