JAGAN’S GOOD WORK BORE FRUITS: YSRC

The ruling YSR Congress attributed credit to the good governance of Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy for witnessing overwhelming victory in the recently concluded gram panchayat as their party-supported candidates won 80.51 per cent of seats while the Opposition Telugu Desam was confined to just

16.05 per cent in the state. Panchayat raj minister Peddireddy Ramachandra Reddy told the media here on Monday that the YSRC supported candidates swept all four phases of gram panchayat polls indicating the support base to their party in the state and said that the TD was reduced to ignominy. He rejected the TD’s claim that it won 41 per cent seats.

Referring to the claims of the TD that it won 41 per cent of seats in the gram panchayat polls, the minister slammed the party for trying to come up with distorted figures to mislead the people and said that though the TD supremo N. Chandrababu Naidu tried to manage the system during the polls, the people rejected the party and predicted that it would soon vanish.

In a separate development, minister for water resources P. Anil Kumar Yadav said that the Telugu Desam might have got single-digit seats in the polls if they were having no party rebels. On TD chief Naidu’s claim that their party won 41 per cent of seats, he challenged him to prove it and asked him to step down if he failed to prove it. He said that the TD secured only eight seats on Naidu’s native village and so was the case in the Kuppam segment. On Naidu’s remarks that their party suffered defeat due to police atrocities, the minister castigated him for saying so.

The minister predicted that their party would continue the winning trend in the ensuing urban local body polls and also in MPTC/ZPTC polls in the state.

In the Nellore district, the YSRC bagged 205 gram panchayats while TD got only 29 and the JS and BJP combo managed to get just two gram panchyats out of 236 gram panchayats went for polls in Sarvepalli, Kovur, Venkatagiri and Nellore rural segments in the district.

Similarly, the YSRC secured

180 panchayats, TD bagged 23 GPs and one panchyat went to Jana Sena and four to independents when the election was conducted for 208 GPs in the final phase at Markapur mandal apart from Giddalur and Yerragondapalem Assembly constituencies.

In Tirupati, Srikalahasti MLA Biyyapu Madhusudhan Reddy said that their party swept the fourth phase of polls by securing 120 of the 121 sarpanch positions in the Srikalahasthi segment.

He said that their party candidates won in all 27 gram panchayats at Thottambedu and also 39 out of 40 gram panchyats at Yerpedu mandal.