LENKALAPALLY: Lenkalapally, a small and sleepy-looking village in the Munugode constituency, is hoping for its share of the spotlight before November 3, to highlight its need for a bridge to political parties.
“We are hoping that Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao will come to our village as he has taken charge of the campaign here,” said Pagilla Ashok, who runs a store that sells tea, and some snacks, located at the centre of the village.
Opposite Ashok’s store — the first tea shop in Lenkalapally according to his friend S. Venkat Reddy — that also serves partly as his home, is a statue of Mahatma Gandhi, whose walking stick has been turned into a crutch by the Nalgonda district collector’s office to tie a banner asking voters not to neglect their duty to vote.
“We have a huge problem,” Ashok said, as he tried to grapple with his young son seeking attention.
The Pedda Vagu, a large stream, has been overflowing for the past two months cutting off access to the other side where some 2,000 acres of land belonging to the villagers have been planted with cotton and is ripe for the plucking. “No one is able to cross it safely. We need a bridge,” he said.
“For the past four years, we have been having this problem, and this path connects Lenkalapally to Narmetta, Chergudem, and Namapuram. When it rains, it is impossible to cross and water rises up to the shoulder level. No one is able to go to the other side safely to pluck cotton,” said Narsimha, a farmer, who was getting ready to cross the stream to check on his field.
“We have already told all TRS leaders in the village that when the CM comes, he must come here and see the stream. We will make sure he will come to this spot, even if there is a large police force with the CM,” he said.
“Today morning, some 20 women decided to go to work for plucking cotton and got on to a tractor trailer,” said T. Sujatha, who lives right next to the stream. “And it got stuck in the middle, was about to topple over, but somehow, it managed to right itself. It could have been a disaster,” she said.
