Money & liquor flows freely in Sagar

Hyderabad: The high-voltage campaign for the Nagarjuna Sagar Assembly by-election scheduled to be held on April 17 has come to an end on Thursday evening.

All the main contending parties the TRS, Congress and BJP have now turned their attention towards voter management and booth management. They are now busy finalising the strategies for ensuring a large number of voters turn out.

All political parties are accusing each other of resorting to luring of voters with liquor and money. A ground check reveals that liquor stocks were already sold out from licensed wine shops in the poll-bound areas. It is alleged that about Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000 is being distributed by the candidates to woo the voters.

Earlier, liquor sales in this constituency were about Rs 5 crore per month. In the last month, alcohol sales had increased to Rs 20 crore. Nearly Rs 1 crore worth of liquor would be distributed to the voters in the next two days, said a local liquor shop dealer.

Energy Minister G Jagadish Reddy was entrusted with the responsibility of campaign for TRS candidate N Bhagat. Congress working president A Revanth Reddy conducted a padayatra in Halia and other leaders also campaigned for K Jana Reddy. The Congress will take up a door-to-door campaign in the next 24 hours.

On the other hand, senior BJP leaders visited the tribal-dominated habitations and urged the voters to support the party candidate Ravikumar Naik. TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao addressed two public meetings at Halia. His two meetings enthused the rank and file of the pink party.

The verbal attack between the TRS and Congress on who did what for the constituency and why people should not give grass to "donkeys," and expect them to give milk took centre stage. Both the TRS and the Congress parties exuded confidence of a comfortable win while pollsters feel that the pink party has an edge.