Telangana ready for Lok Sabha polls
The stage is all set for polling in 17 Lok Sabha constituencies on Monday with 525 candidates in the fray, an average of 31 candidates for each constituency. Curtains came down on the high-voltage election campaign on Saturday evening, and political parties are now focussing on ensuring good turnout at the polling stations as every vote would count in three-cornered contests likely to be witnessed in a majority of the constituencies.
While the rst Lok Sabha election in Telangana saw a straight ght between the Congress and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (now Bharat Rashtra Samithi), the situation changed in the next election — the BJP emerged as a force to reckon with, winning four seats.
The political landscape saw much changes in the subsequent years resulting in the scope for triangular contests in a majority of the 17 constituencies. Top leaders of the Congress and BJP have campaigned extensively for their respective candidates over the past few weeks while BRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao took the burden of campaigning for his party candidates in spite of not being in the best of health. As a result, the Lok Sabha elections, which usually do not attract attention as compared to Assembly polls, saw a huge response for the meetings addressed by these leaders, leaving the three major parties guessing about how much of the response will actually translate into votes in their favour.
Meanwhile, election authorities have made elaborate arrangements for the smooth conduct of polls., especially in areas identi ed as critical and expenditure-sensitive.