Andhra Pradesh state election commissioner (SEC) Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar appears to have decided to fight the legal battle against the Jagan Mohan Reddy government till the last day of his retirement on March 31.
Even as the Jagan government is bringing pressure on Nimmagadda to complete the process for zilla parishad and mandal parishad elections before his retirement, Nimmagadda continues to remain stubborn on his stand.
He remains unmoved with the issuance of a privilege notice by the state assembly for his alleged “objectionable” comments against ministers Peddireddy Ramachandra Reddy and Botsa Satyanarayana in his letter to Governor Biswa Bhushan Harichandan.
On the contrary, he dragged even Raj Bhavan to the court for leaking his letters to the ministers, who served a privilege notice on him based on the letter.
On Saturday, Nimmagadda moved a petition in the state high court seeking a CBI inquiry into the leakage of his letter written to the Governor. He sought to know how the contents of his confidential letters written to the Governor were leaked to the ministers.
The SEC also sought to know how even his leave letters had come to the notice of the government and the social media. He made Raj Bhavan’s principal secretary, chief secretary of Andhra Pradesh and the two ministers as respondents.
However, the judge who first took up the petition, refused to hear the arguments and invoked “note before me” provision. He referred the petition to the chief justice for assigning to a different bench.
The judge was earlier hearing a petition of the state government on the conduct of zilla parishad and mandal parishad elections at the earliest, in view of Covid-19 pandemic.
NImmagadda, however, said the SEC was examining the process of elections and it was too premature to move the court seeking early conduct of elections. The high court reserved its judgement for a later date.