These days, contesting any election has become extremely costly affair. Only those with deep pockets are able to enter the fray, as the voters have become more and more demanding with every election.
Even for the election of a village sarpanch, one has to spend money in lakhs. It will be much more in the MPTC and ZPTC elections and municipal elections.
When it comes to the elections to the assembly and the Parliament, it runs into several crores of rupees.
We have heard the allegations on how the candidates spent money virtually like water during the recently concluded municipal elections in Andhra Pradesh, apart from using muscle power and local police support.
In Telangana, too, hundreds of crores of rupees were spent on wooing voters in the recent Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation elections and even in the just-concluded MLC elections from two graduates’ constituencies.
Educated graduate voters, too, were paid Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 per vote in Warangal-Khammam-Nalgonda constituency.
So, there is no surprise if people are expecting that the ongoing by-election to Tirupati parliamentary seat, too, is going to be the costliest election, as all the three major political parties have high stakes on this seat.
But according to the reports from the ground zero, none of these major parties have not yet taken out their money bags for distribution among the voters.
Though YSR Congress, the Telugu Desam Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party have spent big money on the campaign, sources said they have not taken up money distribution among the voters.
It is learnt YSRC president and chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy told the party leaders campaigning in Tirupati not to distribute money to the voters, as he was confident that they would vote for the party candidate Dr Gurumoorthy.
On the other hand, TDP candidate Panabaka Lakshmi, too, has decided to go slow on the cash distribution indiscriminately, since she would be no match to the YSRC.
She might take up in select areas, sources said. The BJP has no plans to spend money, as it knows it is going to be wasteful expenditure.
Let us see, if the parties do take up money distribution in the last two days – Thursday and Friday, as the polling will take place on Saturday.