Vijayawada: Andhra Pradesh Chief Secretary Adityanath Das wrote a letter to union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan on Monday, asking it for advice on how to conduct the Covid vaccination drive and Panchayat elections simultaneously. Hours after the Supreme Court refused to entertain government petition against State Election Commissioner Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar’s decision to hold Panchayat elections next month.

The Chief Secretary in his letter said around 5 lakh staff will be deployed on poll duty and they include personnel from police, Panchayat raj, and revenue and education departments. “The same frontline workers will be deployed to multiple locations at different polling stations… the issue is more acute in case of police who are only 73,188 but have to be deployed to 1,35,000 polling stations.

Each police personnel will have to be deployed to 3 polling stations on an average on rotation by moving them from one location to another,” he explained. Simultaneously, all the polling staff are deployed away from their place of work and residence as per the Election Commission guidelines.

Initially, citing possible second wave of Covid-19 and later stating that the entire official machinery would be involved in Covid vaccination drive, the government wanted the elections to be deferred. In the following days, a bitter legal battle ensued and the tussle reached climax with the SEC releasing the election schedule hours after an official delegation led by Chief Secretary Aditya Nath Das explained why the elections could not be held in February. Following that the government approached the Supreme Court only to be told it would not intervene in election matters.