The only highlight of the apparently issueless election to Adilabad (ST) MP seat is the cleverness with which the political parties avoided the development agenda during the fortnight-long campaign that ended on Tuesday. The leaders of all major parties failed to reach out to the voters of far-flung habitations or talk of bad roads, continuing drinking water scarcity or any other basic issue involving people’s day-to-day life.
Loddiguda of Gadiguda mandal in Adilabad district, another Loddiguda in Jainoor mandal of Kumram Bheem Asifabad district and Markaguda of Sirpur (U) in the same district are just a few example of habitations that do not have proper approach roads since the accession of Hyderabad State.
Many such villages continue to face shortage of drinking water in summer.
The politicians made use of the model code of conduct (MCC) that bars parties or contestants from giving out assurances that could tantamount to inducements. “How can we assure the voters of laying roads when the MCC is in force,” asked an election agent of a candidate.
The constituency spread over seven Assembly segments in Adilabad, Nirmal and Kumram Bheem Asifabad districts has over 1,350 habitations and 14.88 lakh voters, which makes it difficult for contestants to reach out to each one of them. Therefore, the contestants G. Nagesh of Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), Soyam Bapu Rao of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rathod Ramesh of Congress were dependent on the second rung and grassroot-level leaders to contact voters in remotely-located habitations.
The TRS was dependent on party legislators in all the constituencies, while the candidates of the other two major parties banked on local leaders in the given places. If not for the second-rung leaders, a large number of interior villages would have remained unvisited by the workers of any party. The contestants were in contact with the voters only through media. They addressed press conferences from the mandal headquarters which they happened to visit during the campaign period.
The campaign was lacklustre too as no star campaigner, barring Chief Minister and TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao, visited the constituency.