Fares of private buses running between Hyderabad and various cities of Andhra Pradesh have skyrocketed on the eve of elections as demand surged with most voters from the state who work in Telangana, travelling back to their homes in order to cast their votes.
Andhra Pradesh will vote simultaneously for Parliament and Assembly elections on 13 May and the highly charged political atmosphere has made people keen to travel home and exercise their franchise.
The high octane campaign which saw the YSRCP, the alliance partners TDP & BJP, and the Jana Sena engaged in an evenly poised political battle, also fired the enthusiasm of the voters in this election.
Since yesterday, trains and buses have been packed with scores of people travelling from Hyderabad to Vijayawada, Guntur and the Rayalaseema districts. A large number of voters from AP are also travelling from Bengaluru to reach their home towns before elections. However, those making last minute arrangements to travel home, complained that private bus owners have hiked the fare exorbitantly taking advantage of the high demand. Train tickets were no longer available and even the state-owned APSRTC which runs regular buses between Hyderabad and cities in AP, were already fully booked.
Irate voters even complained to the ECI’s handle on ‘X’ about the unscrupulous private bus owners for hiking the fare. Fares of private buses for today and tomorrow between Hyderabad and AP have surged with those keen to make a quick buck charging even Rs 2500 per passenger.
Quite a large section of the IT employees working in Cyberabad hail from Andhra Pradesh. A majority of them are TDP supporters or sympathisers who had even tried to organise protests in Hyderabad when the former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu was incarcerated in Rajahmundry central jail after failing to get bail in the Skill development scam case.
Also a large number of blue collar workers in Hyderabad hail from various districts of Andhra Pradesh. As beneficiaries of various welfare schemes of the state government, they too are expected to cast their votes to the party in power.
However, the political parties were also arranging buses to ferry the voters home. Supporters of a particular political party hire the buses and take the voters home on the eve of polling. Otherwise, voters were asked to travel on their own and seek reimbursement later on. Some of the voters whose names were in electoral rolls in both states would prefer to cast their votes in AP this time since Assembly elections were being held there along with Parliamentary elections.
On the day of polling, traffic at the toll gates on highways was also expected to be choc-a-bloc with motorists rushing to AP to exercise their franchise.