Afternoon Pulse: Stones and torched cars in Rayachoti and Punganur on day one of civic nominations

Since this morning, the urban local body contest has turned violent. Nominations for 100 urban bodies opened at 11 am, and within the first couple of hours TDP and YSRCP workers clashed in Rayachoti and Punganur, two Rayalaseema towns. Telangana Today, carrying an IANS report, called the Punganur incident the first violence since the State Election Commission announced the schedule on October 14. Both parties say their own people were the victims, and we found no statement yet from the Commission.

In Rayachoti, workers of the two parties threw stones and swung sticks at each other in SN Colony, TV9 Telugu reported. Vehicles were set on fire outside the YSRCP office while former MLA Gadikota Srikanth Reddy was inside, NTV Telugu and Telugu Oneindia reported. Oneindia counted 15 cars damaged and four completely burned; NTV put the number of burned vehicles at about 10, and said media personnel were also attacked. The YSRCP blames TDP workers. TDP circles told TV9 that YSRCP workers struck first, and TV9 said a TDP worker, Madhu Royal, suffered head wounds from stones. Police dispersed both groups. NTV said full details were still awaited.

The flashpoint came shortly after Srikanth Reddy spoke to reporters, TV9 Telugu reported. On the YSRCP website, he accused supporters of Minister Mandipalli Ramprasad Reddy of phoning YSRCP candidates, pressing officials to withhold caste and no-dues certificates, and threatening candidates' families across Rayachoti's 44 wards. These are the party's allegations. We found no response from the minister or the TDP by the time of writing.

Punganur saw a parallel clash. The YSRCP said the convoy of P V Mithun Reddy, its Lok Sabha floor leader and Rajampet MP, was blocked and stoned as he accompanied candidates to the nomination centre, and called it a "murderous attack", Telangana Today reported. 10TV said a DSP fired one round in the air when the crowd would not disperse. Oneindia reported that Mithun Reddy had minor injuries, that his gunman was hurt in the head, and that police kept the MP inside the nomination office for over an hour. The Hans India said police registered a case and began an investigation. The YSRCP also accused the police of standing by, a charge the police have not answered publicly.

Behind the violence sits the scale of the exercise. The Hans India reported that the Commission has set up 5,485 nomination centres, with filing open until October 18, scrutiny on October 19 and withdrawals until October 21. Polling is on October 28 and counting on October 30. With only three days to file, every party's candidates are converging on the same offices at the same hours. That raises the risk of exactly the kind of crowding seen today.

On the loops we flagged this morning, little has closed. The South First, in a report filed after nominations opened, said the TDP, Jana Sena and BJP had still not announced their candidates. Jana Sena has named no one for Vijayawada or Eluru, and the TDP and BJP have named no one in their cities either. The YSRCP has not issued a second list. Its first list, as The South First counted it, covers 27 bodies, seven of them corporations, so Vijayawada, Guntur, Tirupati, Kurnool, Chittoor and Anantapur still have no confirmed YSRCP mayor nominee.

In court, ETV Bharat reported that Justice V Sujatha had listed for today the YSRCP's petition, filed by general secretary Lella Appi Reddy, seeking orders for police and the Commission to give candidates details of cases against them. Justice Mandava Kiranmayi was also to hear a plea from the BCY Party's Bode Ramachandra Yadav to stretch the filing window to six days. We found no reported outcome in either case by early afternoon. The division bench's reserved verdict on the PIL over BC reservations also had not been delivered.