Hyderabad: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday wrote a letter to the chief election officer (CEO) of Telangana, demanding the transfer of the present Karimnagar district collector, commissioner of police and returning officers of the poll-bound Huzurabad seat over alleged malpractices.
The BJP stated in its letter that for the conduct of free and fair elections, the aforementioned officials must be transferred. The party alleged that officers such as the district collector and magistrate, commissioner of police and the Returning Officer in-charge of the Huzurabad constituency have been “acting in a biased manner”.
In the letter, the right-wing Hindu nationalist party claimed that officials have been showing partiality to the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi’s (TRS) candidate Gellu Srinivas Yadav. Moreover, the BJP alleged that officials have been acting as per the instructions of state finance minister T. Harish Rao, who it said is “causing all possible troubles” to other party candidates.
Furthermore, the BJP also claimed that the Returning Officer is also “acting in a biased manner and troubling the other candidates” while receiving and processing applications of other parties and independent candidates.
G Premender Reddy, Telangana state general secretary of the BJP wrote the letter to the CEO. He alleged that the district collector and magistrate of Karimnagar who is responsible for the disbursement of funds allotted by the government towards the Dalit Empowerment scheme (Dalit Bandhu scheme) is “intentionally not disbursing” it.
He claimed that the district collector is holding the funds only to deposit it in the accounts of the eligible families only before October 30 in order to influence the voters and gain benefit for the candidate set up by the ruling party.
In the run up to the bypoll on October 30, former TRS minister (currently in BJP) Eatela Rajender few days ago promised to quit politics if the ruling TRS party won in Huzurabad. He made these remarks while addressing a gathering during his ongoing Praja deevena Yatra at Korkal village of Veenavanka Mandal from Karimnagar district.
Speaking on the occasion, Rajender said that the cadres of the ruling TRS party would disappear after the 2023 assembly elections and added that he would not witness his political death despite the attempts of chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao. He claimed that the people of the state were “eagerly waiting to end the rule of the TRS party”.
Rajender also stated that Huzurabad was “flooded” by state ministers and the ruling party MLAs ever since he resigned from his post. “TRS MLAs had turned scores of villages into liquor bars after taking houses on rent,” he claimed.