One hundred and fifty days, 1,86,000 plus voters spread in five mandals, with a poor party-base. The challenge was to win the Narayankhed seat with a huge majority.
Irrespective of the result that is safely stored in electronic voting machines (EVMs) kept at the Polytechnic College located at the constituency headquarters, the efforts put by Irrigation Minister T. Harish Rao received a pat from voters from almost all the mandals.
“We have not seen any Minister coming to our doorstep in the last several years. For the first time, we had seen a Minister coming to our locality and enquiring about our problems,” said Laskman of Hanmantharaopet village on the day of polling held in the constituency on Saturday.
Though the candidate from the ruling party was Mr. Bhupal Reddy, the campaign was held in a way that it was as if Mr. Harish Rao was the candidate. What happened during the five months period from September 2015 to January 2016 was implementation of sanctioned schemes instead of keeping them in cold storage.
“Rs. 145 crore was sanctioned while late legislator P. Kishta Reddy was alive, while Rs. 32 crore was sanctioned during the past three months. Similarly, Rs. 31 crore for irrigation and Rs. 25 crore for panchayat raj was sanctioned compared to Rs. 5 crore for irrigation and Rs. 4.89 crore for panchayatraj respectively,” stated Mr. Harish Rao while addressing a media conference during the campaign. What Mr. Rao did was utilising the sanctioned funds to the best possible extent and getting the works done.
Even in making efforts to bring migrants to their native places to participate in voting, Mr. Harish Rao played unique role. The migrants were identified village-wise and local party workers were entrusted with the job of bring them on the day of polling. It was informed that one of the party legislators has taken care of transport of voters from the Twin Cities to the villages in the constituency.
