Young contestants in Uppal

Being the newly-constituted constituency, Uppal has its own share of civic problems ranging from drinking water shortage to flowing drainages

The newly created Uppal Constituency with seven divisions is an interesting mix of voters consisting of highly educated families with at least one in the family settled abroad and extremely poor people working as daily labourers in the industries located in Uppal, Mallapur and Nacharam divisions. Problems too are diverse and voters with different ideologies.

People of these divisions will be voting for the first time for a Corporation since all these areas earlier were under different municipalities and later brought under the GHMC ambit with special officers ruling them.

With insufficient funds these areas of were obviously neglected in favour of older MCH localities in the last few years. Despite proximity to the city and water pipelines of Krishna and Manjeera river passing through these areas they continue to face water problems and lack of drainage facilities. Growing prices is a factor which the ruling party has to deal with here given the vast middle class and informed voters.

On the political front, Harivardhan Reddy, who is promoting himself as the Mayoral candidate from Congress is contesting from Habsiguda division, while a majority of contestants from other parties are youngsters who want to make a mark for themselves in politics. Congress faces an uphill task here with rebels contesting in most of the divisions and the sitting Congress MLA, Raji Reddy himself in not favour of some official candidates.

The main opposition party, TDP has strong presence in all the divisions here and this is worrying the Congress. BJP too has good following in Habsiguda and Ramanthapur divisions with candidates quite strong individually too. LSP garnered sizeable votes in the Assembly elections here and it will dent the chances of all parties given the support it has from educated middle-class. Small number of voters means smaller margins between the contestants and none will be surprised if it can bag 1-2 divisions. It comprises of Kapra, Cherlapally, Mallapur, Nacharam, Uppal, Habsiguda, Ramanthapur divisions.