Election campaign means thousands of party workers, hundreds of vehicles, scores of leaders and coordinating them properly till the voters come to the polling booth and cast their vote. The work is being distributed among the second and third level leaders depending on their capacity.
While State-level leaders were pressed into work for Dubbak bye-election by both national parties — the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress — it is being managed single-handedly for the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) by Minister for Finance T. Harish Rao.
Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) has roped in party State affairs in-charge Manickam Tagore and party secretary Bosu Raju in the campaign. Mr. Tagore has visited the constituency twice and held review meeting. Mr. N.S. Bosu Raju has been frequently coming here and participating in house-to-house campaign. In addition to TPCC working presidents — A Revanth Reddy and Ponnam Prabhakar — several leaders like V. Hanumantha Rao, Ponnala Lakshmaiah, S. Chandrasekhar, Konda Visweswara Reddy and other have been participating in the campaign on and off. Every leader was entrusted with the responsibility of some villages or mandal. All the leaders are mostly focusing on the development done by late minister Ch. Muthyam Reddy while he was in the Cabinet during the tenure of Telugu Desam. They were telling people this was the chance to teach a lesson to the TRS. Focus was also on the submerging villages in Toguta mandal where about five revenue villages are going to vanish under Mallannasagar reservoir. Congress candidate Cheruku Srinivas Reddy has good contacts with land oustees of Mallannasagar and has been instrumental in filing a few cases for proper compensation.
Coming to the BJP, party State unit president and Lok Sabha member Bandi Sanjay, another Lok Sabha member D. Aravind, senior leaders D. Aruna, Jitender Reddy, Premender Reddy and others have been taking part in the campaign. Being a resident of the area, M. Raghunandan Rao has started campaign well in advance and the party has been focusing mainly on youth. He has promised to get the same compensation for the oustees of Mallannasagar on par with oustees at Siddipet and Gajwel.
In the case of TRS, it is only T. Harish Rao who has been running the show with involvement of local leaders. All the leaders roped in are from the erstwhile Medak district. For him, the day starts early in the morning and ends late in the night. While visiting the villages he has been exposing the unfulfilled promises by BJP at Centre like one crore jobs per year. He has also openly challenged the BJP leaders to prove the share of Centre in schemes like KCR Kit, pensions for beedi workers. He also assures the voters that he will be there locally along with party candidate S. Sujatha while leaders of other parties will leave constituency once the elections were over.
“We do not know why other leaders are not bothered about bye-election. The entire responsibility was put on Mr. Harish Rao for reasons best known to party leadership,” commented a leader on condition of anonymity.
