HYDERABAD: Abysmal poll percentage in Hyderabad and adjacent urban areas has always been a problem. However, if an urban voter is interested to cast his vote, how is he to decide as to whom to vote for, when there is absolutely no data available on the performance of the incumbent MLA?
Urban voters, mainly working professionals residing in the cities usually have no direct interactions with their elected representatives, leaving them with no personal experience to gauge the performance of an MLA from their Assembly constituency, to decide as to vote for him or against him.
From the government side, there is no effort to provide any sort of quantified data on the performance of MLAs in the State to empower urban voters with information to take a decision. There is no publicly available data by the government on how many questions did a particular MLA raise in the Assembly, on what issues the questions were raised if any, the attendance percentage of MLAs and Bills introduced, if any. While it is not the role of an MLA to ensure civic amenities, each MLA was allocated Rs 3 crore per year from 2017 as part of Constituency Development Programme by Telangana government. This amount was Rs 1.5 crore per year before that. However, there is no data available in the public domain as to how much of this allocated money has been utilised by the MLAs in Telangana to initiate development projects in their constituencies. Although a website of Constituency Level Development Monitoring System is available for Telangana, it does not display any data.
Some cities like Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai or states like Madhya Pradesh or Chattisgarh have no private research bodies who compile data with various parameters on the performance of MLAs and present it to the public. This way the urban voters can have at least one way of deciding if they would like to vote for their MLA to be in power again or not. However, Telangana or specifically in Hyderabad, there are no such private organisations.
Urban voters need to take initiative
Rakesh Reddy Dubbudu, Telangana coordinator for Association for Democratic Reforms and founder of ‘factly.in’, while pointing out that the MLAs role is not exactly to ensure civic amenities, said, “Everything cannot be served on a platter. What stops urban folks in knowing the performance of their MLA if they are interested, like filing an RTI or petitioning their MLA asking him to raise a particular issue in the Assembly? Part of the responsibility lies with citizens. Although the need for data availability from government cannot be denied, the responsibility also lies on the urban folks.”
Are political parties failing to cater to the urban populace?
Hyderabad: Are political parties failing to speak ‘urban’? While NGOs and the EC are trying their best to pull out the urban voter from their couch to the polling station, many say the fault lies with the political parties who are not engaging enough with their voter base. “In the Indian political system, the urban voter is independent and so political parties know that they will make an informed choice by reading news. The people can’t be influenced in the last minute with votes or freebies and so politicians tend to give up on the section,” explains Professor Subbarangaiah, NGO Let’s Vote. The EC data suggests there are over 39 lakh voters in Hyderabad district alone. The Serilingampally constituency falling in Rangareddy district has 5.49 lakh voters approximately. However a glance at the campaigning fervour in the State also shows a non-urban bias, with horse-share of campaigning directed to the districts than the cities, where election fever is yet to grip the people. Nowadays the urban voters won’t simply get swayed by emotions or what others are doing, add experts. “They want a clean candidate, one who is responsive and sensitive to their issues and accountable,” adds Karuna Gopal, a BJP leader.