Amaravati: While the entire country was battling with COVID-19 outbreak, Andhra Pradesh government took measures to exercise its powers to expel an executive who was one of the whistle-blowers of the coronavirus issue in India.
The state government removed Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar, the state election commissioner of Andhra Pradesh. His decision to postpone the local election had irritated the C.M YS Jagan Mohan Reddy despite being liked and followed by ministers of other states.
Jagan led AP government ascribed the reasons of his decision to adjourn the local body polls and moved to the Apex Court, thus challenging the powers of SEC. This upheld the SEC’s powers to defer polls.
Jaan government decided to expel Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar through an ordinance having a cut off tenure of three years from the existing five years. This decision came after the government ordered investigation regarding alleged distribution of the COVID-19 funds by the ruling party.
V Kanagaraj, the former judge of Madras High Court has taken charge of state election commissioner. The opposition party questioned this move of Reddy government, so the High Court submitted a lawsuit of public interest to counter the Ordinance.
Dr SY Quraishi, former Chief Election Commissioner took to Twitter to mention, “Election management is a totally administrative job. Andhra misadventure will probably boomerang, ‘Don’t try to repair what ain’t broke.’ We have one of the best electoral systems in the world. Even Hillary Clinton calls it gold standard.”
Opposition party said that the existing Jagan Reddy government had shunt Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar form a Constitutional post driven by self motives and gave excuses that they are giving much priority to increase efforts in battling COVID-19 outbreak.
The former Chief Minister and Opposition party President, N Chandrababu Naidu tweeted, “Amid this coronavirus pandemic, the CM is doing vedenta politics. He passed an ordinance to remove the election commissioner, just because he passed an ordinance to postpone the elections keeping in mind the COVID-19 outbreak”. “In order to gain total power, it’s a dangerous measure to compromise the health of people and the economy of the state”.