As the race for the Nagarjuna Sagar seat heats up, the leaders of the political parties in Telangana have been making regular appearances in the constituency to campaign for the candidates of their respective parties.
Today, BJP leader Vijayashanti was also seen trying to mobilise support for the party's candidate for the by-election, Panugothu Ravi Kumar Naik.
In her bid to woo voters on Naik's behalf, she highlighted what she felt were the many faults of the saffron party's rivals for the seat, the TRS and the Congress.
"Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao and the Congress candidate, K Jana Reddy, are very good friends. Voting for the TRS, therefore, is the same as voting for the Congress, and vice versa. And anyway, why is Jana Reddy contesting for a seat from which he did not even win in the last Assembly elections? It is clear the people do not support him. Of course, they do not support the TRS either since the ruling party only makes false promises about jobs and free housing and then does little to make good on its assurances. The TRS regime is pushing the people of our state towards a rebellion," she charged.
The saffron party has been campaigning quite aggressively for the seat following its
defeat in the MLC elections in the graduates' constituencies of Warangal-Nalgonda-Khammam and Hyderabad-Mahabubnagar-Rangareddy.
It has reportedly even enlisted a 30-member team of star campaigners. The team includes state party chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar, national Vice-President D K Aruna, Union Minister of State for Home Affairs G Kishan Reddy, and firebrand MLAs Raja Singh and M Raghunandan Rao.
Apart from the aforementioned leaders, who have been seen in Nagarjuna Sagar quite frequently in the recent past, Telangana in-charge of the BJP Tarun Chugh has been
staying in the constituency for the past few days as he is reportedly guiding the party cadres on how to streamline the campaign for the seat.