In the run-up to the Assembly elections, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) candidates for the Kothagudem, Yellandu and Pinapaka Assembly seats are fine-tuning their campaign strategy to garner the support of Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) employees and retired personnel, who play a decisive role in determining the poll outcome in the coal belt.
The contract workers of the company also constitute a substantial number of electors in the Kothagudem region. Sources said a little over 10,000 employees, including the coal workers, are on the company’s rolls in the Kothagudem, Manuguru, Yellandu and Corporate areas in the district.
The TRS candidates are heavily banking on the support of the SCCL workers and have initiated efforts to prominently highlight the ‘slew of welfare measures’ initiated by the TRS government for SCCL employees in the past four years while taking up campaigning, party sources said.
The ruling party contestants have drawn up plans to rope in the services of the party-affiliated Telangana Boggu Gani Karmika Sangham (TBGKS), the recognised trade union of the company, for electioneering.
The TRS candidate for Kothagudem seat and former MLA Jalagam Venkat Rao has already met TBGKS honorary president and Nizamabad MP K. Kavitha and requested her to participate in the election campaign in the coal belt.
TBGKS senior leaders held discussions with Mr Rao in Kothagudem on Monday on the campaign strategies to reach out to the SCCL employees as well as the retired staff.
However, growing resentment among the aggrieved contract workers of the company, who staged a series of agitations demanding enhancement of wages and other statutory benefits in the recent past, has become a matter of concern for the ruling party campaign managers, sources added.
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