What’s cooking between AP CM and the State Election Commissioner?

The following article was written for The Commune Magazine. Pasting it here for reference:

At the beginning of March 2020, the state of Andhra Pradesh was gearing up to have the elections for rural local bodies. The State Election Commission announced dates starting from March 21 for polls to MPTC, ZPTC, gram panchayats etc. By mid-March, opposition parties were beginning to demand that these elections be put on hold because of the onset of COVID. The ruling party folks took strong exception to this demand and wanted the polls to be held at any cost.

The State Election Commissioner (SEC), Mr. Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar, decided to postpone the polls keeping in mind the onset of COVIID. This was before there was even talk of a lockdown or Janata Curfew. The ruling party folks went verbally berserk. They questioned the intention of the SEC in siding with Chandrababu Naidu. They bought in the caste angle of the SEC and attributed his decision to him being from the same caste as Chandrababu Naidu. They said COVID doesn’t exist and therefore this move by SEC is nothing but political in nature.

While these verbal attacks were happening, the lockdown was announced. This put a full stop to all plans surrounding these elections. But this did not put a full stop to the machinations of the Chief Minister, Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy. In April 2020, he brought in a Government Order that changed the term of the SEC, through which he was able to replace N. Ramesh Kumar with an SEC of his choice. Both the High Court and the Supreme Court intervened and reinstated Mr. Ramesh Kumar in July 2020, in what was a major blow to the Chief Minister.

With the number of COVID cases decreasing and also elections being held to state assemblies, the State Election Commissioner got ready to conduct the Gram Panchayat elections. He started seeking opinions of various parties in October 2020. The ruling party’s verbal attackers were activated again. The same people who argued that COVID is not a big deal in March went on and on about how COVID hasn’t subsided fully and the elections must be postponed.

January 2021 has been an eventful month. Sensing that this logic was not flying through, they came up with the logic that the government has to focus its energies on vaccine deployment and therefore cannot help in conduct of the polls. With the SEC being adamant, the employees then came out and said that they are not ready to participate in this exercise until they all get vaccinated. Employee unions started drafting and releasing statements against the SEC, Mr. N. Ramesh Kumar too! With employee unions refusing to participate and the SEC releasing the notification for the polls, the matter went to the High Court.

The Chief Minister received two major setbacks in the courts. First, the High Court ruled in favour of the SEC. The state government immediately filed a case in SC and till SC heard the case, everyone starting from the Chief Secretary and the DGP to the VRO refused to participate in any meeting the SEC conducted. In yet another slap to the Chief Minister, the Supreme Court also ruled in favour of the SEC.

It is routine for our Delhi based English media to cover every small skirmish Arvind Kejriwal has. It is routine for our South based English media to hype every small statement that can bolster “Kerala model”. Therefore, it is but natural that they did not want to cover the constitutional crisis brewing up in AP in the past one month. The crisis was precipitating only because the egotistical Chief Minister did not want the SEC to gain an upper hand. In hindsight, there was no way the polls would have been conducted in the third and fourth weeks of March 2020. The irresponsible and reckless statements of ministers in March 2020 haven’t yet been forgotten by the people of the state.

Is Jagan Reddy’s ego so much more important than winning the elections? Clearly, he is well poised to win majority seats in this election so what exactly is this noise about? Shouldn’t our media be more robust in questioning these undemocratic actions of an elected Chief Minister? Shouldn’t his arrogance and contempt towards a person holding the post of SEC be called out? Shouldn’t multiple judgments by the High Court and Supreme Court not instill a sense of responsibility in him? Is Jagan Mohan Reddy getting blindsided by the massive mandate he has received?

All these questions would have been debated if such a thing happened in a BJP ruled state. Or if Arvind Kejriwal did the same thing. Sadly, the machinations of the Chief Minsiter of AP haven’t received the due coverage they deserve.