Notwithstanding the direction given by the state high court, the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government in Andhra Pradesh is not interested in conducting elections to the local bodies in the state as long as retired IAS officer Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar is in the seat of state election commissioner.
On Friday night, the AP government issued an order extending the rule of special officers in mandal parishad and zilla parishads by another six months.
According to the order, the special officer rule will continue in mandal parishads till July 3 and Zilla Parishads till July 4.
It clearly shows the Jagan government is no mood to conduct the elections to local bodies at least for another six months, let alone in April when Nimmagadda relinquishes his office after completion of his term.
In all probability, the elections could be held in May or June, so that the newly-elected bodies in mandal parishads and zilla parishads would be formed and ready to start functioning in the first week of July.
In fact, the elections to local bodies should have been held in early 2019 itself during the regime of the TDP.
However, the Chandrababu Naidu government dodged the elections, apparently due to fear of a negative verdict that would have serious impact on the assembly elections.
Since then, the special officers have been ruling the local bodies. Though Jagan government commenced the exercise of conducting elections to local bodies in March last year, the SEC stalled the process on the pretext of Coronavirus epidemic.
Since then, the state government and the SEC had been indulging in a virtual war. Though Nimmagadda has proposed to conduct the elections in February, the state government has been stalling the same on the pretext of Coronavirus vaccination.
The issue has gone to the state high court, which has recently ordered that the government send a three-member official team to hold talks with the SEC to take a decision on the elections.
Even as the process is on, the state government issued orders extending the special officer rule by six months.
