Hyderabad: BJP making inroads into BRS fortress

Hyderabad: Who will win from Serlingampally Assembly constituency? BRS or BJP? A reality check by Hans India indicates that it would be a keen contest between these two parties. With Congress party also going aggressive and likely to field a candidate, a triangle contest appears to be inevitable.

It appears that this time there are many strong contenders from all the three parties. BRS Arekapudi Gandhi feels that the party would again give him the ticket. From BJP Gajjala Yoganand, Ravi Kumar Yadav, M Satyanarayana are the contenders and from Congress party, Raghunandan Reddy Jaipal, Riyaz Khan are the main contenders.

The Srilingampally Assembly constituency was carved out of the Khairatabad Assembly constituency before the 2009 elections as per the Delimitation Act of 2002 and is also a part of Chevella Lok Sabha constituency. It has 5.75 lakh voters.

This constituency is also often called as IT Hub of Hyderabad and the fight has always been between BRS, Congress and BJP. Areas like Madhapur, Gachibowli, Kondapur, Miyapur are some important landmarks in the constituency. During the 2018 election, Arekapudi Gandhi of the BRS won the seat by defeating V Ananda Prasad of the TDP with a margin of 44295 votes. In the year 2014, Gandhi had won from TDP ticket by a margin of 43,186. The BJP has started door to door campaign and the party activists are visiting especially slums and are also organizing job mela in the constituency. Ravi Kumar Yadav is another strong contender from BJP and for the past two years he has been working with the people by organising free eye operations and distributing free notes books.However, the constituency has major problems like massive illegal encroachments and acute shortage of drinking water. Another concern it is said is irregularities in voters list. Opposition parties allege that many bogus voters have been added to the list.

The opinion on the working of the BRS MLA is divided. While in some pockets of the constituency, people say that the MLA had been taking up developmental activities, there are many slums where people say that the MLA had neglected them after the last elections. They said nothing had changed in the last four years. They indicate that this time the contest is going to be really a tough one and they would take a decision on the eve of the polls on whom to elect.