Hyderabad: The issues of closure of roads for civilians and the loss of more than 52,000 voters in the Cantonment Board elections have become striking points for the residents and Opposition parties contesting in the Secunderabad Cantonment Assembly constituency.
Resident organisations are also organising forums to interact with the contesting candidates and taking their word on all those issues that concern them. In the Secunderabad Cantonment constituency, connectivity with the northwestern part of the city has become a major issue with the closure of the roads by the Local Military Authority (LMA). The outgoing TRS government had failed to reopen the roads, despite the orders from the Ministry of Defence.
There were also walls built across roads by the LMA obstructing the passage of vehicles, and residents strongly demand the removal of wall at RK Puram underpass.
Mr C.S. Chandrashekar, general secretary, Federation of North Eastern Colonies of Secunderabad, said, “We have a clear vision of what we expect from our representatives with our agenda, we would like to know what is the execution plan for the next five years from the contesting candidates. We suffer really bad due to the lack of connectivity to the rest of the city, and the closure of roads adds to that, we also demand a Metro Rail line for Yapral.”
Another major issue that continues to thrive in the cantonment is the deletion of voters from the board elections, following Supreme Court orders, the Secunderabad Cantonment has deleted the names of 28,123 voters in eight wards from the voters list as they were encroachers of Defence land.
A large chunk of deleted voters were from Annanagar Ward 2, 108 Bazaar and Sainagar. It can be mentioned here that these voters are eligible only for the board elections, and their voting rights are intact in the Assembly elections. But the loss of their rights has triggered a fear of losing their only piece of land that they have in the cantonment.
The candidates representing various political parties and independent candidates are using the inability of the earlier government in resolving these issues and are promising that each party would get it done in their limits, if voted to power.
