HYDERABAD: Telugu Desam Party on Monday exuded confidence about faring well in the local body elections in all the districts, besides being in a position to bag six to seven Zilla Parishads.

Addressing a press conference, TDP leaders K. Srihari and M. Renuka said in Telangana that the elections would throw up surprising results, reflecting how Congress and Telangana Rashtra Samiti have neglected the region.

They said elections showed that the intolerance of Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy had gone up. After mounting a verbal onslaught on the Opposition and the media, Dr. Reddy was now finding fault with the Court.

They said the elections would go down as the worst ever in terms of violence and poll irregularities.

Flow of liquor and money was unprecedented. Congress MLAs entered the polling booths and organised rigging after driving away the TDP agents.

Yet, the State Election Commission remained unmoved. A number of petitions were presented, but not even in one instance the Commission had taken action.

They called for a debate on ways of maintaining the autonomy of the SEC and liberating it from the influence of the Government.

Demand flayed

Mr. Naidu's demand for publication of a white paper by the State Election Commission (SEC) on election offences drew heavy flak from the Congress on the ground that the regulator was not answerable to any political party.

The Congress spokesmen Paladugu Venkata Rao and N. Tulasi Reddy told a news conference here on Monday that the demand showed how Mr. Naidu was losing his sense of judgement.

Leave alone making such statements, former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao or his contemporary political heavyweights had never referred to former CEC T.N. Seshan, although he went to the extreme in conducting elections. They had recognised that it would not be a dignified way to attack the election authority as it was an autonomous body.

They challenged Mr. Naidu to identify a candidate in the latest elections who did not distribute money or liquor. The culture had crept into the system, they added.

At a separate news conference, Congress MLA G. Muddukrishnama Naidu advised the TDP president to peruse the reports of the Director General of Police on incidents during poll days as they would be more exhaustive than a white paper published by SEC.

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