The Election Commission of India (ECI) was furious against AP Chief Secretary Jawahar Reddy and DGP Harish Kumar Gupta for their failure in checking post-poll violence in Andhra Pradesh. Both were summoned to Delhi on Thursday and the full commission grilled them for about halfen hour. DG Intelligence Vishwajeet was also present.
Chief Election Commissioner Rajeev Kumar, Commissioners Gyanesh Kumar and Sukhbir Singh Sandhu questioned them on how no preventive measures were taken and additional forces were deployed on intelligence inputs.
In an official statement, the ECi said “We have expressed our anger over the post-poll violence in AP. We have told the CS and DGP strongly and directly to ensure appropriate action against SPs so that such incidents do not recur.”
Jawahar Reddy and Harish Kumar Gupta, who were in defence, said that the violence broke out due to personal factions and feuds between certain communities. But the ECI asked them why they could not control the incidents of violence?
“If the problematic areas were identified earlier, why were adequate precautionary measures not taken? Why couldn’t the riots be controlled? Who is responsible for these incidents? You or we? Don’t you have intelligence information?”, they grilled.
It seems that the ECI is angry and asked who is responsible for the three consecutive days of violence. It particularly expressed deep anger over the outbreak of violence in Macherla, Narasarapeta, Chandragiri and Tadipatri. The ECI stated why they could not control incidents like stray attacks and burning of vehicles.
The ECI deplored attacks on some candidates of opposition parties and some ruling party candidates themselves involved in attacks. It wondered why they failed to take action despite being warned in advance. It seems the ECI was not satisfied with the report given by CS and DGP in the form of incidents that happened in the state and actions taken, besides actions to be taken.
