The Hindu : Front Page : Congress worker stabbed to death in Guntur district

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Monday, Jul 03, 2006

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Congress worker stabbed to death in Guntur district

Special Correspondent

Snatching of ballot boxes, other malpractices mar polling

POLLS WITH A DIFFERENCE: A building hit by a bomb in Ikkuru village in Guntur district and in the background are people queued up to cast their vote at a polling station on Sunday.

HYDERABAD: Violence, clashes between Congress and TDP workers, snatching of ballot boxes and other poll malpractices again marred the second phase of polling to the local bodies in 11 districts on Sunday.

A Congress worker was stabbed to death in Guntur and in an election-related incident on Saturday night in Mahbubnagar district, another Congress worker was fatally attacked. The State

Election Commission (SEC) ordered re-poll in 44 polling stations and was examining further requests from district Collectors by evening. Guntur alone accounted for 21.

Heavy polling

The polling percentage was estimated at 70. Voters turned out in large numbers in spite of heavy rain at several places.

The incident in Guntur occurred after TDP activists stormed a polling station at Kanaparru village in Nadendla mandal. They hurled bombs at their Congress rivals and attacked one of them with sickles. Clashes with bombs between Congress and TDP groups were also reported at four other places in the same district.

The police opened fire in the air to quell violent mobs in Guntur, Nellore and Mahbubnagar. The CPI (Maoist) blasted landmines near a polling station in a forest village in Charla mandal of Khammam district. No one was injured in the incident and the polling continued with additional police force.

Meanwhile, the police confined TDP MLA Nagam Janardhana Reddy and five other legislators, Vamshikrishna, Kishta Reddy, J. Krishna Rao, Gurunath Reddy and D.K. Aruna, in their houses in various parts of Mahbubnagar. Police also seized the car of Telugu Desam president N. Chandrababu Naidu's brother Ramamurthy Naidu in Chandragiri, Chittoor district.

Miscreants threw ballot boxes in wells in three villages in Srikakulam. The bandh call given by CPI (Maoist) worked effectively in the agency areas of Visakhapatnam district.

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