Campaigning heats up in AP

With six days to go for first phase of polls in Andhra, campaigning has picked up with party leaders of every hue hitting the road.

With six days to go for the first phase of polls in Andhra Pradesh, campaigning has picked up with party leaders of every hue hitting the road and raining promises on voters in their effort to ensure that victory is theirs.

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The first phase of polling on April 20 will cover 147 assembly and 21 Lok Sabha, lower house of parliament, constituencies. The entire Telangana region, which has 107 assembly and 15 Lok Sabha constituencies and the north coastal districts will be covered in the first phase.

The second phase on April 26 will cover an equal number of constituencies in the Rayalaseema region and south coastal districts.

And as D-day approaches, national leaders of various parties have descended on the state.

Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) national president M. Venkaiah Naidu, Congress in charge of the state Ghulam Nabi Azad, Communist Party of India's (CPI) national secretary A.B. Bardhan and Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) politburo member Sitaram Yechuri are all here.

The leaders of the ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP)-BJP combine and the opposition alliance have accelerated their campaigns, whizzing through constituencies to ensure that they cover the maximum area.

TDP president and Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, Congress' senior leader Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy and Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) president K. Chandrasekhara Rao are already on a whirlwind tour of different constituencies to woo voters.

The Congress show is set to intensify Thursday when party chief Sonia Gandhi will be on a day-long visit to address meetings at different places.

While Chandrababu Naidu and Rajasekhara Reddy are campaigning in the north coastal region, their leaders Venkaiah Naidu and Azad are slugging it out in the Telangana region.

Chandrababu Naidu is heli-hopping addressing half-a-dozen meetings in various districts, and his rival and star campaigner for Congress Rajasekhara Reddy, or YSR as he is popularly known, is touching more constituencies by road.

Chandrasekhara Rao, whose party is fighting for statehood for Telengana, is addressing nearly a dozen meetings a day.

The left party leaders are busy canvassing in their strongholds Khammam and Nalgonda districts in Telangana.

Banking on the anti-incumbency factor and its alliance with the TRS and left parties, the Congress is on a high and expecting a landslide victory.

At every meeting, YSR is promising free electricity to farmers and the poorest of the poor, lessening the burden on the domestic sector due to high power tariff and reviving the crisis-ridden agriculture sector.

YSR, who is making all-out efforts to bring the Congress back to power in the state after nine years, sleeps in makeshift tents on the roadside.

The chief minister's style of campaigning is different.

He begins the day after addressing a few voters over telephone during his daily programme 'Our vote our future' from his residence in Hyderabad.

Then, in a rented private helicopter, he covers two to three districts every day, highlighting the achievements of his government during the last nine years in his bid to seek another stint as chief minister.

However, he devotes a lot of his speech to attacking the Congress and the foreign origins of its president Sonia Gandhi as well as praising Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

His campaign is supplemented by the BJP and film stars. Leading the band of stars is popular Telugu film actress and BJP leader Vijayashanti. The TDP's own candidates and film stars, including Roja and Babu Mohan, are also busy.

The TDP is also concentrating on the electronic media. Half a dozen Telugu television channels have been bombarded with advertisements, featuring the several film personalities in its ranks, ridiculing the Congress and the TRS.

The opposition combine prefers to go direct to the people and is essentially focussing on public rallies.