Campaigning Ends; Parties Shift Focus to Micro-level Booth Management in Telangana
Hyderabad: The high-octane political campaigns for the Assembly polls ended at 5 pm on Tuesday, with parties shifting their focus to micro-level booth management and last-minute strategies to ensure voters come out in large numbers to exercise their franchise on November 30.
Sources said that in many instances, parties and candidates are also gearing up to distribute money and liquor to voters a day before the polling. Also, it was revealed that candidates, in constituencies of tough fights, were willing to distribute Rs 1,000-Rs 5,000 per vote. Few candidates reportedly offered Rs 10,000 per household, irrespective of the number of voters.
The BRS, Congress, and the BJP considered the major contenders this time around have set up their war rooms at their respective headquarters and put them on high alert, from November 28 to November 30, for effective micro-level booth management.
These war rooms are equipped with a database of voters of all 119 Assembly constituencies, their caste/religion, backgrounds, political affiliations, occupation, and contact information.
Parties have also gathered the mobile phone numbers of voters, their present addresses, and permanent addresses. They have identified voters who migrated to other towns, cities, and states. They are reaching out to them to ensure they cast their votes by making transportation arrangements, booking bus/train tickets for them, and in a few cases, booking flight tickets if they are located at a distant place within the country.
The main focus, however, is on migrant voters under HMDA limits, who are from surrounding districts and migrated to Hyderabad in search of livelihoods or for their ward’s education. A significant number of voters were also found to have migrated to Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Bhiwandi, Sholapur, and Surat, among other places.
Parties identified that nearly 40,000 voters in the Munugode Assembly constituency alone were residing in LB Nagar, Uppal, and surrounding areas, with all parties competing with one another to reach out to these voters.
