Tiruvuru to see close fight

Vijayawada: Tiruvuru Assembly segment in Krishna district is witnessing a no-holds-barred battle between the Telugu Desam and YSR Congress; both the parties promising an end to the suffering of the fluoride-affected kidney patients in the segment.

The TD is keen to wrest this SC reserved constituency from sitting YSRC MLA Kokkiligadda Rakshana Nidhi and has shifted minister Kotthapalli Samuel Jawahar who represents Kovvuru in West Godavari district.

The constituency has more or less equally divided between men and women voters – 1,01,831 women and 1,01,565 men. The eight transgenders make it a total of 2,03,404 voters in the segment.

Namburui Srinivasa Rao of the BSP, being supported by the Jana Sena, Pole Santhi of the BJP and Parasa Rajiv Ratan of the Congress will also try to get some of these votes.

The SC Madiga voters number about 46,000 nearly one-fourth of the total voters and are spread across four mandals — Tiruvuru, A. Konduru, Gampalagudem and Vissannapet.

Hundreds of people living in the tribal areas in both A. Konduru and Gampala Gudem mandals have been suffering from chronic kidney diseases for the past few years.

Here the Lambada community voters number about 12,000 voters and most of them support YSRC. There are about 18,000 Kapu voters, Kammas number about 15,500, another 15,000 each Gowda, Yadavas and SC Mala voters. The segment has about 7,000 Muslim voters.

Since both the frontrunners are Madigas, votes of the community are likely to be split. The TD can hope to get all the Kamma votes, the YSRC Lambada and a sizeable chunk of Mala votes.

Yadavas would look towards the YSRC but the Gowda votes could be split between the two. The YSRC is likely to get almost all the Muslim votes.

It all comes down to the Kapu voters; who they back can walk away the winner.

However, YSRC candidate Rakshana Nidhi is facing a tough battle; there are complaints that he failed to develop the constituency. He, however, says that the ruling TD obstructed all his efforts to develop the constituency by not allocating sufficient funds.

Mr Jawahar says that the TD government issued pension for kidney patients and set up health camps and a dialysis centre in nearby Nuzividu.

The YSRC is carrying out a negative campaign against Mr Jawahar, portraying him as a non-local candidate. Locals believe that this would certainly make an impact.

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