Chittoor district, the home turf of Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and the last Chief Minister of united Andhra Pradesh N. Kiran Kumar
Reddy, is set to witness an uncertain fight among the major political parties going by the trends in voters’ list,
with emergence of about two lakh new voters in 14 Assembly constituencies spread over three parliamentary constituencies of Tirupati, Chittoor and Rajampeta.
As the deadline for enrolment of new voters ended on October 31, the district election officials received 1,99,013 applications. Political parties maintain that though the figure might look miniscule, it would play the margin game, considering the ground realities in the district, with several Assembly constituencies witnessing close contest between the Telugu Desam Party and the YSR Congress Party.
For instance, YSRCP candidate R.K. Roja won the Nagari Assembly constituency by a slender margin of 858 votes over TDP veteran leader the late Gali Muddukrishnama Naidu. The Puthalapattur seat saw neck-and-neck contest between the two rivals, with the TDP losing by just 902 votes. Three other constituencies, Palamaner, Srikalahasti and Satyavedu saw close fights, and the winner being decided with a difference of a few thousand votes.
In the 2014 elections, the number of total votes polled in all the 14 constituencies stood at 30,39,816, constituting 78% turnout. The new voters in 2019 elections are expected to be 5.1% and it is believed to be crucial considering political, social and community factors.
YSRCP charge
While the YSR Congress Party
cadres allege that the ruling party
had engineered deletion of voters found to be against them from the rolls, the latter quickly termed it as baseless, saying that despite the instructions of the election officers
to the YSRCP to appoint agents at
the booth level, there was no action from them. YSRCP youth leader Gnana Jagadish from Chittoor Assembly constituency alleged that names of about 2,000 voters, sympathisers of his party, were removed from the list in the constituency.
The TDP district president, Pulivarthi Nani, said that the majority of the new voters were youth.
Students left out?
It was observed that in spite of the presence of a large number of educational institutions in the district, with thousands of students having completed 18 years, neither the district authorities concerned with voters’ enrolment process, nor the political parties had shown seriousness in creating awareness among the target group.
Meanwhile, Assembly constituencies of Kuppam, bordering with Tamil Nadu and Karnataka; Satyavedu, Nagari and Gangadhara Nellore, hold very low percentage of voters, despite having some of the populous mandals under their jurisdiction.
