Vizianagaram: Sarpanch aspirants eye migrant workers' votes

Vizianagaram: As the votes of migrant workers crucial in gram panchayat elections, the sarpanch aspirants are making all efforts to bring them back to their native places in the district. According to sources, it becomes a costly affair for the sarpanch candidates to bring the migrant workers from distant places.

As the votes of each and everyone is valuable in sarpanch elections, the aspirants are eyeing on votes of migrant workers from the district. So, ahead of voting, they are calculating their vote bank and assessing their possibility of winning chances in the elections. With the second phase of elections for 415 sarpanch posts to be held on February 13, the candidates have intensified their efforts to win in the elections.

Actually thousands of workers from the district are working in various states as construction labour, agriculture labour and in various skilled and unskilled professions. All of them came to their native villages during Sankranti and after the festival, they went back to their workplaces recently. Now, again they are getting calls from sarpanch candidates to come back and vote in favour of them.

According to sources, a sarpanch candidate is paying around Rs 1,500-2,000 on each voter, who is living in other districts and for the voters living at Visakhapatnam, they are offering Rs 1,000. If a family consisting of 4 votes, the aspirant is spending around Rs 10,000 towards travel expenditure and bringing them back to the village. After getting money, the voters are booking tickets in trains and making arrangements to come here.

K Narayana, who is living in Hyderabad as welder in a private firm, said "I am invited by the sarpanch candidate to come to my village and vote in favour of him. For this I received some money to meet travel expenditure. I need to go there along with my wife and son to cast my vote to the candidate, who is also my friend." The sarpanch candidates have put some educated youth in this job to contact the voters away from the villages and convince them to vote in favour of them.