Khammam: There has been a surge in business in all sectors after the Khammam Municipal Corporation elections. This has been attributed to the money distributed to the voters before the polls by the political parties and candidates.
Traders of cellphones, textiles, liquor, kitchenware, provision stores have been doing brisk business in the last few days. Even the managements of schools and colleges are also happy as many of the parents cleared the fee arrears after the elections.
These facts came to light during a case study conducted by the students of Khammam Study Circle. They wanted to find out how the money distributed to voters to buy their votes by the political parties and candidates was being spent and where was the election money reaching.
An eight-member team comprising CH. Kishore, MD Noori, M Swathi, S.K. Jeba, K. Sai, Mounika, G. Giridhar, and K. Satish, all studying B.Com final year, visited 50 divisions and collected information from the families who participated in the voting and how they spent the money received from the candidates.
CH. Kishore said, “About 30 per cent of the amount was spent on liquor and evidently, the liquor traders did a brisk business after elections. A major portion of the money given by the candidates was taken by the heads of the families."
According to sources, each family having four voters received money ranging between Rs 8,000 to Rs 16,000. A candidate in the 42nd division is learnt to have distributed 25-kg fine quality rice bags to 1,500 families in the division and she won with a majority of 2,400 votes.
K Sai, one of the team members, said that a woman voter, M. Dhanalaxmi, spent the money towards her medical expenses as she had undergone different tests recently.
"The voters did not hesitate to reveal that they had received money from the candidates."According to the study, the candidates and political parties spent Rs 50 crore on the voters and another Rs 50 crore on transport and campaign material.
Many of the families spent the money on buying branded garments.
The fact that the voters did not hesitate to speak about the money they have received from the candidates surprised many.
