Election authorities maligned since Seshan's times: SEC

Hyderabad, June 19 (UNI) Andhra Pradesh State Election Commissioner A V S Reddy today likened himself to T N Seshan saying ''those entrusted with the onerous task of ensuring free and fair polls are maligned'' since the time of former Chief Election Commissioner.

The EC has been recently subjected to ''unreasonable criticism'' whether it be on holding polls in West Bengal or in Kerala, he said while addressing a press conference here.

Criticising political parties in the state, including the opposition TDP, for keeping on filing complaints, he said it would not be practically possible to act on every complaint.

Upset with the opposition charge that the voters list was full of discrepancies, he said for months together the Commission had been writing to parties to facilitate registering of names in the voters' list.

''Inclusion and deletion of voters is a continuous process and elections cannot wait for electoral rolls revision which will continue after the polls to Panchayat Raj bodies too,'' he said.

''The very fact that over one lakh candidates have filed their nominations for the MPTC seats and over 10,000 for ZPTC seats showed that the electoral rolls have reached the grassroots level and are by and large accurate,'' he opined.

He said 92,197 nominations were found valid for the Mandal Parishad polls and 7855 for the Zila Parishad polls.

UNI SM ROY LR KN2009