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High-stakes poll today
Hyderabad: High-Stakes Poll Today, The stage is set for Wednesday\'s election which will go down in the history of Seemandhra as the last General Election being held in the united state of Andhra Pradesh.
- Jagan and Naidu face most crucial battle
- Both go all-out to woo voters with freebies
- Over 3.6 cr voters to elect 25 MPs, 175 MLAs
- Sabbam Hari quits JSP, backs TDP-BJP candidate in Vizag
Hyderabad: The stage is set for Wednesday's election which will go down in the history of Seemandhra as the last General Election being held in the united state of Andhra Pradesh. This election is also going to be most crucial one for two politicians - Nara Chandrababu Naidu of TDP and Y S Jaganmohan Reddy of YSRCP. Both the leaders have been vying to become the first Chief Minister of the residuary state of Andhra Pradesh, and this has resulted in the electoral battle becoming one of the most expensive ones.
The Congress is relegated to a distant third slot and the Jai Samaikya Andhra party floated by former Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy is being deserted by some of the candidates. This election will decide the fate of the new state which will elect 25 MPs and 175 MLAs. More than 3.67 crore voters will exercise their franchise. There are 333 candidates in the fray for Lok Sabha and 2,241 candidates for Assembly seats.
Both Naidu and Jagan need the lion’s share of the seats, both for Lok Sabha and Assembly, and hence they went on to make several promises. Naidu shed his image of being a reformist and promised several welfare measures including waiver of loans for farmers and women, nine-hour free power supply to farmers, stipend for unemployed and houses for the poor.
On the other hand, the young leader of YSRCP has promised to append five signatures on files pertaining to pro-poor schemes and developmental projects which would change the face of the residuary state. Both Naidu and Jagan focussed all their attention on poll management on Tuesday. They held teleconferences with the rank and file and booth-level agents and directed them to ensure that there was a large turnout on Wednesday. In an interesting development, Jai Samaikyandhra Party (JSP) candidate Sabbam Hari, who is Kiran Kumar Reddy's Party candidate in Visakhapatnam Lok Sabha, withdrew from the contest.
Hari on Tuesday said he was retiring from the electoral race so as to support the TDP-BJP combine's candidate Kambhampati Haribabu. Meanwhile, over one lakh people from Hyderabad who have votes in their native places left Hyderabad on Tuesday. The APSRTC operated more than 1,000 special buses to meet the extra rush.
