Civic polls: As CPI prefers Cong, CPI (M) to go it alone

Khammam: With the CPI preferring to hobnob with the Congress, the CPI (M) has decided to go alone in the first ever election to the Khammam Municipal Corporation (KMC) civic body slated for March 6. Albeit, the district functionaries of both the parties have decided to have an electoral alliance for the KMC polls in line with their national leadership, the CPI, of late, had other thoughts of including the Congress into their fold.

Once, Khammam district was a bastion for the Communists. The big concern for all the three major parties–CPM, CPI and CPI (ML-New Democracy) today is the steady erosion in their support base. Over the years, the Communists had ceded space to Congress and Telugu Desam and of late to the ruling TRS party. For the last three decades, both CPI (M) and CPI collectively either had a truck with the Telugu Desam or with the Congress.

But their friendship fell apart in the run up to 2014 general elections with CPI (M) refusing to ally with the CPI-Congress truck. The CPM supported YSR Congress despite the then state secretary of CPI K Narayana had contested. He lost the election to YSRC’s P Srinivas Reddy. After that, the functionaries of both the parties appeared to have reinvented the need of going together. They supported Suram Prabhakar Reddy, Left-backed Independent candidate for the Council election from Nalgonda-Khammam-Warangal Graduates constituency, and then CPI’s Puvvada Nageswara Rao for the Council election from the Khammam Local Bodies Constituency.

Against this backdrop, CPI (M) differed with the CPI’s proposal to have a poll pact with the Congress in the KMC polls. It may be mentioned here that CPI (M) was at the helm of affairs of Khammam municipal council for about four decades. The CPI (M), which has been resisting the CPI’s move, stuck to its stand and announced its first list of contenders for the civic body polls. Announcing the candidates for 40 divisions of the civic body on Tuesday, party district secretary Pothineni Sudarshan Rao said: “Our efforts to strike a poll pact with the CPI have failed as the latter was insisting to include Congress.

This, as a policy matter, we cannot accept, hence the party has decided to contest alone in the elections.” The party would go with ‘Better Khammam’ slogan, Rao said, accusing the ruling TRS of misusing the government machinery to influence the voters. Alleging that a police officer attached to the Intelligence Wing has been trying to influence the voters, he urged the administration to behave impartially. Meanwhile, the CPI (ML-New Democracy) has decided to field two candidates-Bethampudi Sanghaiah (4th division) and Bachalakura Jhansi Laxmi (34th division), according to Avula Venkateswarlu, party’s Khammam Division secretary.