It has been a long time since one has heard about Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar, former state election commissioner of Andhra Pradesh.
After fighting with the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government between 2020 and 2021 in the conduct of elections to the local bodies in the state and managing to retain his position after a prolonged legal battle, Ramesh relinquished his office on the completion of his term on March 31, 2021.
Subsequently, too, Ramesh had to continue his confrontation with the Jagan government on getting back his voting right in his native village in Guntur of Andhra Pradesh and finally succeeded in the same.
He was not seen in any of the political or apolitical programmes after that and has been staying put in Hyderabad enjoying his retired life.
But now, with the elections to Andhra Pradesh state assembly are due in another six months, Ramesh decided to don a new “avatar” as civil society activist and continue his fight with the Jagan government.
He made a re-entry into active life in Andhra in the name of the secretary of non-governmental organization called Citizens For Democracy and started fighting against the electoral malpractices alleged being indulged in by the Jagan government.
On Wednesday, Ramesh lodged a complaint with chief electoral officer M K Meena about enrolment of bogus voters in the electoral list.
In his letter to the CEO, he said there were largescale irregularities in the enrolment of voters with the connivance of village and ward volunteers in the state.
Ramesh demanded that the rectification of voters’ list should be entrusted to teachers, rather than village/ward volunteers.
“The Booth Level Officers should be properly trained and they should work in tandem with the teachers,” he said.
The former SEC alleged that there was also a largescale deletion of genuine voters due to the partisan attitude of the village and ward volunteers.
“Even the Comptroller and Auditor General has expressed reservations about the village and ward volunteers’ system,” he pointed out.
Requesting that the voters’ list should be prepared in a transparent manner, Ramesh said without fool-proof voters’ list elections cannot be held transparently.
He demanded that the volunteers should be kept away from electioneering and teachers should be involved in the process.