Hyderabad, November 09: The campaign war between the two major parties, the Congress and the TDP for the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections would begin from Tuesday. Both the parties claimed that they would win 100 seats and win the mayor’s post.
The TDP leaders, who hope that the recent infighting in the state Congress would help them win more number of seats, began a quick damage control exercise by arranging a meeting between the disgruntled elements in the party with party president N Chandrababu Naidu during the last two days. Naidu spoke to them and told them that the party would recognise their services and would take care of their political interests. He explained to them about the changed political scenario in the state and the need for the TDP to utilise the opportunity to come back to power in 2014.
While the division-level leaders have already started door-to-door campaign, all the senior leaders have been asked to kick-start their campaign from various places in the city. The former speaker K Pratibha Bharati will launch the campaign from Vijayanagar Colony on Monday. Naidu himself would take up an intensive campaign in all the 150 divisions from Tuesday.
Talking to party workers at his residence on Sunday, Naidu recalled various developmental activities taken up by the TDP in Hyderabad and how the Congress government had “purposefully ignored the development of the city.” He said it had even failed to control the mosquito menace and called upon the cadre to work towards saving Hyderabad. “The only way is to see that the Congress party was defeated in the GHMC elections,” he said.
The party would also take up issues like spread of viral fever including dengue and chikungunya, rise in the prices of essential commodities, failure to supply pure drinking water resulting in incidents like Bholakpur etc.
Meanwhile, the former mayor T Krishna Reddy called upon the people to upload on the website www.ghmc.in about the problems faced by them in their respective divisions like drinking water issues, bad roads, poor drainage system, low-voltage, incidents of crime etc. He asked them to upload related pictures on the website so that the party could incorporate its policies on those issues in the manifesto.
On the other hand, the Greater Hyderabad Congress president D Nagender on Sunday claimed that the bickerings that were witnessed last week were being sorted out and that it was a common feature of the party since it was the most democratic party and expressed confidence that it would win in 100 divisions. He also said that Kadapa MP Y S Jaganmohan Reddy would also campaign from Monday or Tuesday.
-Agencies