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Local leaders to select AP Congress civic poll candidates

Syed Amin Jafri in Hyderabad

The Congress would give more representation to the youth in the coming municipal elections in Andhra Pradesh. The party would also accommodate more minority candidates.

Stating this at a media briefing after a high-level meeting with senior leaders in Hyderabad on Thursday, Congress general secretary in charge of AP, Motilal Vora, said that the selection of the party candidates for the municipal polls would be done at the district and local level.

However, if unanimity could not be reached with regard to any post, the issue would be sorted out by the state election committee headed by AP Congress president Y S Rajasekhar Reddy.

Vora said that the senior leaders discussed the party's strategy for the ensuing municipal polls at their meeting and decided to highlight the "miserable failures" of the Nara Chandrababu Naidu government during its second spell in power after the recent assembly polls.

"There is lot of discontent among the people since all welfare schemes and developmental activities have come to a standstill due to the acute financial crisis that the state has been facing in the last few months. The economic situation is quite bad. The government is unable to find resources to fund the schemes promised in the poll manifesto of the Telugu Desam Party. Chandrababu has betrayed the trust of the people. The popular discontent will have its impact on the TDP's prospects in the municipal polls," Vora said.

Responding to queries, the Congress general secretary felt that the proposed alliance between the TDP and the Bharatiya Janata Party in the municipal polls would not have any impact. The political situation has changed since the assembly and Lok Sabha elections.

The Congress, which had won 42 municipalities and three municipal corporations in the 1995 civic polls and added another five municipalities to its tally in the subsequent elections, is contesting all the 103 municipalities and five municipal corporations going to the polls in March this year.

The Congress has constituted a 16-member committee, comprising senior party leaders, to take decisions on matters concerning the municipal polls, including selection of candidates.

Dr Rajasekhar Reddy said that the party would allot tickets to the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, backward classes and women as per the reservations provided to them in the municipal bodies. "We will seek to give more representation to the youth and minorities since there are no statutory reservations for them," he quipped.

Vora also said YSR would continue in the post and lead the party's campaign in the ensuing civic elections.

Soon after the party's debacle in the 1999 assembly and Lok Sabha polls, YSR had sent in his resignation as the AP Congress chief to Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

The demand for his replacement was also voiced by a section of party leaders, including former AP Congress president V Hanumantha Rao. He held YSR morally responsible for the failure of the party to wrest power from the TDP in the assembly polls.

The YSR camp had even projected the name of senior leader D Srinivas, who belongs to backward classes from Telangana region, for the top AP Congress job in case of any leadership change.

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