Amaravati: The ruling YSR Congress made a clean sweep of the mandal and zilla parishads elections in Andhra Pradesh, routing the opposition Telugu Desam Party in almost all of the 13 districts.
Till 7.30 PM on Sunday, the YSRC bagged 385 out of 515 zilla parishad territorial constituencies and 5,565 of the 7,221 mandal parishad territorial constituencies for which elections were conducted on April 8.
The TDP ‘boycotted’ the elections but technically its candidates remained in the fray as the ballots were printed before the party announced its decision.
The election process for the MPTCs and ZPTCs, the second and the third tiers of the Panchayat Raj system began in March 2020 but the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent legal battles stretched it this far.
There are a total of 659 ZPTCs of which the ruling party bagged 126 unanimously.
It also won 2,271 MPTCs unopposed. The TDP won 100 MPTCs unanimously.
Eleven unanimous winners in ZPTCs and 81 in MPTCs died since March 2020 even before the poll process ended. Elections in eight ZPTCs and 355 MPTCs were withheld for different reasons.
TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu faced humiliation as the YSRC won all the four ZPTC seats in Kuppam Assembly constituency represented by him. Also, the YSRC clinched 17 of the 19 MPTC seats in Kuppam.
In Chandrababu Naidu’s native village Naravaripalli, too, the ruling party won the MPTC seat by a margin of 1,000 votes.
In Chittoor district, the TDP chief’s native, the YSRC clinched all the 33 ZPTCs for which elections were held. It had also won the remaining 32 but two of the winners subsequently died.
Same was the case in SPS Nellore, Anantapuramu, Krishna, Prakasam, Vizianagaram and Kurnool districts where the YSRC held its sway.
Overall, the TDP managed to win only four ZPTC seats out of the total 659 while the CPI(M) managed one so far.
In the MPTCs, the TDP bagged 733, Jana Sena 110, BJP 24, CPI(M) 15 and CPI eight. Interestingly, the Congress managed to win four MPTCs two in Visakhapatnam district and one each in East Godavari and SPS Nellore.
Independents have so far won 145 MPTC seats, according to information released by the Information and Public Relations Department.
Meanwhile, the State Election Commission issued a notification fixing September 24 as the date for the indirect election (by the elected members) of the president and vice-president of the mandal parishads.
The chairperson and vice-chairperson of the zilla parishads will be elected on the September 25.
