Yerragondapalem Constituency: Ajitha Rao assures better package to Veligonda displaced

Yerragondapalem: The Congress candidate for Yerragondapalem Assembly constituency Budala Ajitha Rao says that she is confident that the voters would cast their votes in her favour and send her to AP Legislative Assembly.

She says that being a local person, she has a complete understanding of even the remote villages and the issues bothering them.

Ajitha Rao spoke to The Hans India, while taking part in a hectic election campaign. She said that she has been in active politics for more than a decade and with the common people during their struggles and problems.

She said that when the TDP faced a crisis in the constituency, it was she who had brought the leaders and cadre together, and reconstructed the party from the ground level. She said that though her family spent time and money to stand by the TDP workers for years, she could not get the support of the influential leaders in the constituency.

Ajitha Rao said that the reasons for her failure in the 2014 and 2019 elections included delay in the announcement of the ticket and the non-cooperation from the other aspirants within the party.

She said that even after the defeat, she took the responsibility of standing by the people and questioning the irregularities and corruption of the local officials and the people’s representatives. She said that in 2014 and 2019, she got around 67,000 votes and she believes that she had gained some more supporters in the last five years. Dejected over the TDP leadership denying her ticket, Ajitha Rao quit the party and joined the Congress recently.

The Congress party candidate claimed that she is a local candidate and called the TDP and YSRCP candidates non-locals to the constituency. She said that as the local leader, she observed that the constituency was pushed backward in terms of development in the last decade. She said that the Chenchu hamlets and tribal tandas have no proper road connections to their mandal headquarters, education, drinking, and irrigation water supply.

She said that the governments neglected the development of the SC reserved constituency, with the SC, and ST sub-plan funds. She said that though the Veligonda project has been under construction for the last 20 years, the Chief Minister, Ministers and local leaders are busy laying plaques but never bothered to complete it.

Ajitha Rao requested the locals to support and vote for her considering her as their daughter and sister. If she was given the chance to become their representative in the Assembly, she said that she would strive to provide a better resettlement and rehabilitation package to the people in the submerging villages in less time. She would welcome industrialists to establish food processing units and nurseries to employ the locals so that they stop migrating to other places, and be supportive to the elders in their villages.

She would also bring special funds for SC constituencies and take up development activities like safe drinking water connections to every house, government colleges in each mandal, opportunities for higher studies to students, laying of interior roads, etc., and other issues in the constituency.