YSRCP demands SEC Ramesh Kumar Resignation

Amaravati: YSRCP demanded the resignation of the State Election Commissioner N Ramesh Kumar for not acknowledging the letter written to the Union Home Secretary seeking Central forces for his protection and conduct of elections.

This development took place after the Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy held a high-level meeting with the Goutam Sawang, Director General of Police and other senior IPS officials on the letter at Chief Minister's Camp office at Tadepalli in Guntur on Thursday.

Addressing at a press conference at the party office at Tadepalli, senior leader and Government Advisor (Public Affairs) Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy said as Ramesh Kumar didn't acknowledge the letter, the YSRCP assumed it as written by him. He demanded Ramesh Kumar to tender resignation.

Condemning the comments made in the letter, Sajjala said that the allegations and language used in the letter were not appropriate for a person who is holding a hierarchy position in the system.

He accused that all the statements in the letter were depreciative and were completely from the opposition TDP point of view.

The YSRCP leader stated that "The SEC was instituted to follow constitutional rights but not to follow TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu's instructions".

Sajjala criticised that Chandrababu Naidu influenced the chairman of Legislative Council during earlier Council sessions and now influenced the SEC to postpone the local body elections. The SEC letter came up to divert the Supreme Court judgment on local body elections, he said.

The Government Advisor suspected that it was a conspiracy to postpone the local body elections citing Coronavirus as the reason and a section of the media highlighted it favouring TDP.

It can be clearly seen from the judgment of the Supreme Court that the decision to postpone the local body elections was taken under political influence, he said.

Meanwhile, the YSRCP MLAs including Gadikota Srikanth Reddy, TJR Sudhakar Babu, Ambati Rambabu, Jogi Ramesh, Malladi Vishnu, K Anil Kumar and Kolusu Partha Sarathy urged the DGP G Sawang to conduct a thorough probe into the alleged letter purportedly written by the SEC to Home Secretary. In the three-page complaint letter, they explained that the news published in certain media damaged the interests of the YSRCP and hence they demanded action against the media houses too. In that complaint, they explained that the letter was reportedly leaked by TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu and five other journalists of the party loyalists. After the release of the letter to the media, they blamed that SEC did not react either to condemn it or to acknowledge it.