YSR hints at early elections

Hyderabad: General elections to Parliament and state assembly will be held in February after seeking an vote on account. The Andhrapradesh chief minister, Y S Raja sekhara Reddy told TOI that during his recent visit to New Delhi, he had been told to be ready for going to polls in February. "Elections to Parliament and Assembly will be held simultaneously," he said.
State congress party and the administration is being geared up to face the polls as the government fears that the issue of price rise and shortage of fertilizers could cause damage to the party.
Exuding confidence that the welfare
would help the government to come back to power but YSR expressed concern over the possible negative impact of price rise and fertilizer shortage in the state.
Realising the gravity of the situation, the government has gone in for a "kneeschemes like Indiramma housing, pension scheme, higher minimum support price for paddy, three percent interest loans for various sections, Rs 2-akg rice scheme, Arogyasri , Jalayagnam and other programmes jerk," reaction and was taking necessary corrective measures to contain the price rise and ensure that the farmers get enough fertilizers during the rabi. In the meantime, the government had to face another problem of suicides by weavers in Sircilla and it had worked out slew of measures to see that they do not commit suicide.
While writing off the possibility of any threat from TDP as "Chandrababu Naidu has lost credibility and is not worth taking note of," Reddy said he was unhappy with the the Left parties in the state particularly the CPM state secretary B V Raghavulu who said that his party would put aside the ideology and join hands with anyone to defeat the Congress party.
The CPI is also talking of defeating the Congress and its secretary K Narayana has come up with the idea of power sharing . All such confused moves of the opposition will help the party to score an easy victory, Reddy feels.
According to senior officials, there was no truth in reports that the Parliament and assembly need to be dissolved. A simple resolution by the cabinet was sufficient and the Union government can write a letter to the election commission to hold the polls.
Once a new house was constituted, the old one automatically gets dissolved, they added.