Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu has come out with a strange argument while castigating the Election Commission.
In his letter to the Chief Election Commissioner, Naidu accused the commission of questioning his authority from conducting review meetings.
He went to the extent of alleging that seven people had died of thunderbolts in the entire state last week only because he was not allowed to review the departmental works.
“The deaths could have been averted had the democratically elected government been allowed to function.
As the chief minister, I could have monitored and implemented preventive measures to save seven previous lives lost due to thunderbolts. Who is responsible for these deaths?” he asked.
It means, Naidu has the technology and power to stop thunderbolts by holding review meetings. He could not do so only because EC prevented him from doing so.
Well, that is height of exaggeration. Yes, there is a technology available with the Andhra Pradesh government to send advance warnings to the people on the possible fall of thunderbolts.
The disaster management department, with the help of Real Time Governance System (RTGS) has been sending such alerts for the last two years.
But it doesn’t require the chief minister to hold the meetings and issue orders. Whether Naidu is there or not, the department will continue to send warning signals to the people and prevent the deaths due to thunderbolts.
In fact, irrespective of Naidu’s meetings, the department would have definitely send the warning signals to the people and probably, seven of them ignored these warning and fell victims. They would not have waited for Naidu to make the warning announcements!