Political Diary

Briefing the media after a three-hour long politburo meeting, party general secretary Kadiam Srihari and leader of the opposition in the legislative council D Veerabhadra Rao said the Congress party would not hesitate to pump in any amount of money to try and come back to power. "Hence, to counter it, the TDP politburo is appealing to all its supporters to donate liberally to the party fund. It had received Rs 5 lakh donation in the last one month but a lot more needs to flow in," he said.

The politburo also demanded that the state election commission to prepare a list of officials, who are not following the poll code and replace them with officials from other states if need be.

The TDP alleged that the district officials were not implementing the poll code effectively. Veerabhadra Rao said that revenue minister K Ramakrishna was still laying foundation stones and inaugurating buildings in Visakhapatnam district. When the TDP tried to contact the returning officers, they were not available and instead the party was told to leave their complaint with the MROs. In view of this, Rao said the CEO should punish the officials who are still working as "agents of the government," and replace them with efficient officials from outside state if need be.

The politburo also discussed the hurdles being faced in the process of seat sharing and appealed to the alliance partners not to announce individual lists lest it may add to confusion. He however denied that the Mahagarjana (public rally) scheduled to be held on March 9 at the Parade Grounds has been cancelled because of the failure of the alliance partners to arrive at an understanding on seat sharing.

Srihari said they were law-abiding parties unlike the ruling party. "We don’t want the local candidate to suffer on any account," he said. It would require huge resources to organise the meeting since the time available was too short and even it manages to make arrangements, the entire expenditure could be counted as local candidate’s expenditure. To avoid such complications and also in view of the fact that the alliance partners are participating in the rally being organised by former prime minister Dewe Gowda on March 12 at Benguluru, they felt that the Hyderabad rally be cancelled.