While the polling has been going on at a brisk pace across Telangana for the assembly elections being held on Thursday, the voters within the limits of Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation continue to be disinterested.
Except on the outskirts like Lingampally, Rajendranagar and Qutbullapur, the voters of GHMC have not evinced interest in exercising their franchise as usual. In the first four hours of polling not even 16-17 percent of voters cast their vote.
Especially in the high-profile Information Technology corridor, the voters have not shown any enthusiasm in casting their vote.
Most of the techies, who had worked till late in the night, did not prefer to get up early in the morning and made most of the holiday declared by the Election Commission.
Apparently, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) has pinned high hopes on these techies voting for the party in the elections.
BRS working president and I-T minister K T Rama Rao, who has done massive work to develop I-T corridor, was confident that the BRS would get huge support from them.
He even held a series of meetings with the I-T employees, conducted workshops for them and even promised to attend to all their issues, if the party is voted to power for the third time.
But when it came to voting, not many of the techies showed any interest in casting their vote. Their laziness in using their right to vote might cost the BRS dearly in the elections, say analysts.
The BRS leaders are hopeful that the techies would turn in up in big numbers by afternoon. In the last assembly elections, too, the overall poll percentage in the GHMC limits was just around 50 percent, whereas it was more than 80 percent elsewhere.
Out of 24 assembly seats in GHMC limits, the core city of Hyderabad accounts for 15 seats. These seats are crucial for any political party. While in the rural areas of the GHMC, the polling percentage is picking up but in the core city, there is not much rush at the polling stations.
This is causing tension to all political parties, particularly the BRS.
