Monday and Tuesday saw a rush of people at railway stations and bus stations, with a majority of them said to be proceeding to their native places in East and West Godavari, Nellore, Guntur, Krishna, Prakasam, Anantapur, Chittoor and Kurnool districts in Andhra and Rayalaseema regions, primarily to cast their votes.
Officials of the South Central Railway and the Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation said the rush, estimated at about three lakh, could indeed be that of people going to vote, but said it was also because of the summer season when people took vacations with families, during school/college holidays.
In tune with the demand and based on the queues at current booking counters, senior officials of the SCR attached extra coaches on Tuesday, starting with the Janmabhoomi, Konark and East Coast Express and continuing towards the evening, with trains such as Visakha Express. The normal outbound traffic is about 2.30 lakh including 1.5 lakh from Secunderabad, 44,000 from Hyderabad and 36,000 from Kacheguda stations and there was clearly a 20 per cent increase on Tuesday, according to SCR’s Chief Public Relations Officer Sambasiva Rao.
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“There is heavy outbound rush of people towards Seemandhra since Monday and Tuesday right since the morning and on Monday we operated 223 specials, including 74 to Vijayawada, five to Visakhapatnam, one each to Srikakulam and Vizianagaram, 13 to destinations in East and 18 to West Godavari districts, 70 to Ongole, two to Anantapur, three to Kadapa and 25 to Kurnool,” said APSRTC’s Chief Traffic Manager, Suresh.
Private operators too pressed additional buses into service and there was more-than-the-usual rush at locations such as Kukatpally, Sanjiva Reddy Nagar, Ameerpet, Lakdikapul, near the Mahatma Gandhi Bus Station, Malakpet, Dilsukhnagar and Kothapet, with people scrambling to get tickets to any bus they could, to reach their native places.