Pleasure trip to polling stations : Warangal

Warangal: The pleasure trip holiday, the electorate of the Warangal Local Authorities' Constituency have been enjoying for the last fortnight or so has finally come to an end as all of them in batches reportedly descending on Hyderabad en route to Warangal.

Now the all-important execution part is left for the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) leadership, which successfully organised camps for corporators, councillors, MPTC and ZPTC members in the hill stations of Kerala, Karnataka and other States.

Although the TRS leadership is not much worried about its candidate Pochampally Srinivas Reddy prevailing over the Congress' Engala Venkat Ram Reddy in the polling scheduled for Friday (May 31), it does not want to take any risk, especially against the backdrop of its setback in the Lok Sabha elections.

With the voting is going to be conducted through ballot and it's in the form of optional preferential voting, the TRS leadership is sceptical over electorate's know-how about the system. Even though the electorate have been enlightened about the voting process by conducting mock poll in the camps, the lingering doubt among the leadership is how far it was successful. Especially the doubt is on ZPTC and MPTC members as majority of them lack proper knowledge due to their low educational background.

On the other hand, some of the electorate had returned to Warangal midway through the camp due to unavoidable reasons like attending weddings and other ceremonies. However, they have been constantly in touch with the TRS leadership, it's learnt.

Speaking to The Hans India, a senior TRS leader said: "All the voters, who are presently in Hyderabad, would go straight to their polling stations on Friday morning in special buses." Responding to a query, he said that

almost 700 voters of the total 902 are in the TRS camp. Those in the camps were told to cast their first preferential vote in favour of Pochampally Srinivas Reddy and nothing else, he added.

The number of voters in the Warangal Local Authorities' Constituency is 902. The break-up of electorate: ZPTCs 47, MPTCs668, corporators 58, councillors 115, ex-officio members 14. The number of polling stations 10. Polling time: 8 am to 4 pm. The counting of votes will take place on June 3. Warangal Urban District Joint Collector S Dayanand is the returning officer for the by-poll. It may be recalled here that by-poll for Warangal Local Authorities' Constituency was necessitated due to the resignation of Konda Muralidhar Rao.