Curtains came down on Sunday on campaign for by-elections to the 12 Assembly constituencies in Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh, scheduled to be held on Tuesday.
The campaign has ended at 5 pm, so the contesting candidates should not organise any public meetings any more, Chief Electoral Officer I.V. Subba Rao said. The campaign for the bypolls, necessitated by the resignation of the 12 sitting MLAs in support of separate Telangana demand, centred around the same issue. Ten MLAs among those who quit were from TRS and one each from TDP and BJP.
Faced with the challenge of retaining the seats where its MLAs quit, the TRS has harped on the separate statehood demand by projecting its legislators as martyrs who sacrificed their posts for the sake of Telangana.
The ruling Congress and main opposition TDP also played the Telangana card by asserting that only they were sincere towards the demand.
The campaign has witnessed heated war of words between TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao and state Congress president D. Srinivas, who is contesting from Nizamabad Urban. Both have been pulled up by the Election Commission for violating the model code of conduct on different counts.
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Wasnik: Scam to target CM
Age Correspondent
New Delhi
Seeking to exploit the issue of alleged multi-crore irregularities in Bihar, the Congress will go all out to “expose” the Nitish Kumar government in the run-up to the upcoming Assembly polls.
“We are going to take up this issue among the people from block level to the state level,” AICC general in-charge of the party affairs in Bihar Mukul Wasnik, said.
Mr Wasnik, also the Union minister of social justice and empowerment, said that the Congress would also expose the Nitish government’s claims that it had hardly received any support from the Centre.
Mr Wasnik said the visits of a number of Central ministers to the poll-bound state had helped people to know the factual position of the state government’s claims of development and it also helped the people understand what the Centre had done for Bihar, he added.
Seeking to debunk the JDU-BJP government’s claims of turning around Bihar, the AICC general in-charge said the promise of rapid industrialisation had turned hollow.
“The sick sugar industry continues to be sick and same is the fate of the jute industry. Crimes including atrocities against the Scheduled Castes have increased,” Mr Wasnik alleged.
He made light of RJD supremo Lalu Prasad’s claim that a votefor the Congress is a vote for the BJP. “I don’t know how many people are going to believe what he says.”