Munugodu bypoll: Youth hold the key

Munugodu: The Munugodu bypoll has now thrown up a new aspect. All parties are now looking towards the youth who constitute over 20 per cent of the total 2.2 lakh voters in the age group of 18-30.

These voters will be playing a key role in the fortunes of the contestants and hence all the main players, the TRS, BJP and Congress are vying with each other to win over this section of the voters.

The NSUI (the student wing of Congress) and Youth Congress has taken up the responsibility of seeking youth voters support by organising regular contact programmes with them in the villages and mandal headquarters. The urban dominated Chautuppal mandal constitutes nearly 25 per cent youth voters, followed by Samsthan Narayanpur (20 per cent). Munugodu, Chandur, Marriguda and Nampally and Ghatuppal have 18 per cent to 20 per cent youth voters.

How to get their support is the big challenge before the three political parties. TRS leaders claim youth are happy with the government for issuing job notifications to fill nearly 60,000 vacant posts. Many of the youth voters from the constituency were preparing for competitive exams. The party leadership assured them of providing every facility to undergo training for the exams in Hyderabad and nearby municipal towns. Youth, who were pursuing professional courses like engineering, and pharma, were getting jobs in corporate companies soon after the completion of the courses.

The only challenge before TRS is to prevent youth from getting influenced by the rival party propaganda against Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao's government. TRS working president K T Rama Rao is planning to hold a meeting with youth groups to showcase what the government had done for youth in the last eight years to create jobs in the private and government sector.

The BJP is harping on showcasing the achievements of Prime minister Narendra Modi. ABVP and BJP Yuva Morcha have created social media groups to spread the BJP agenda directly among the local youth. Their line of argument is that "KCR had promised to fill all vacant posts in the government departments but failed. The contract employees were also not regularized."

A Shankar (24), a graduate from Nampally mandal, told The Hans India that the youth in Munugodu were struggling to get jobs either in private or government due to lack of training and skill development facilities. Neither the TRS government nor the BJP-led union government took any active measures to provide jobs to the rural youth in the constituency. "I will cast my vote to the party which guarantees a job to me," he said.