Poll panel delists 12 defunct parties

Delisted parties include NTR TD, Anna TD, JTP

Former chief minister N.T. Rama’s son Nandamuri Harikrishna’s Anna Telugu Desam Party, Lakshmi Parvathi’s NTR Telugu Desam Party, and former home minister P. Indra Reddy’s Jai Telangana Party have ceased to exist as political parties.

Twelve parties belonging to the Telugu states are among the 255 parties that have been removed from the list of registered and unrecognised political parties by the Election Commission of India.

The EC delisted these parties based on the reports from field inquiries that they were no longer in existence. The EC had begun delisting the parties as per norms from February and completed the exercise on December 13.

The EC had decided to review the cases of the registered unrecognised parties, which did not field candidates in any general election from 2005 to 2015, in order to consider whether they continued to exist and function from the registered office address.

“On such verification in the field made by the chief electoral officer... it has been reported to the (Election) Commission that some parties are no longer in existence or functioning,” said EC under secretary A.K. Pathak in a letter to the chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes recently.

The Anna TDP was founded on January 26, 1999, by former chief minister N.T. Rama Rao’s son N. Harikrishna after breaking away from his brother-in-law, Mr Chandrababu Naidu. The party contested in the 1999 polls but could not win a single seat.

NTR-TD (Lakshmi Parvati) was launched by N.T. Rama Rao’s wife Lakshmi Parvati in 1995. The party contested in polls in 1996, 1998 and 1999. Former home minister P. Indra Reddy formed the Jai Telangana Party in 1998 and later merged it with the Congress.