Voters question parties over civic neglect and criminal backgrounds at Jubilee Hills bypoll meet

The Forum for Good Governance (FGG) on Sunday organised a face-to-face meeting between contesting candidates and voters of the Jubilee Hills Assembly constituency ahead of the upcoming byelection. The event, organised at the Telangana Union of Working Journalists (TUWJ) office in Basheerbagh, saw spirited exchanges between voters and representatives of major political parties.

Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) was represented by Dasoju Sravan Kumar and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) by S. Prakash Reddy. Each candidate was allotted 20 minutes to explain their party’s ideology and outline developmental plans for the constituency if elected.

Voters raised concerns over the criminal records of candidates, questioning the parties’ priorities. They pointed out that the BJP candidate faces five criminal cases, the B.R.S. candidate one and the Congress candidate seven. Participants alleged that parties appeared more focused on fielding ‘winnable’ candidates rather than those with clean records.

Several civic issues dominated the discussion, including congested roads, encroachments, and poor drainage systems in localities such as Rahmat Nagar and Erragadda. Residents of Shaikpet complained that they had been demanding public transport connectivity for over a decade, but their appeals were routinely ignored once elections concluded.

In Indira Nagar colony of Yousufguda, voters said the absence of a proper tap water connection and the frequent flooding of low-lying areas even after light rainfall continued to trouble residents.

Participants noted that many long-pending civic issues in the bastis had been ignored for years, only to be hurriedly addressed ahead of the byelection. He said that projects worth ₹200 crore were suddenly sanctioned and some works begun just two weeks before the election code came into effect.

FGG president M. Padmanabha Reddy and Secretary Soma Srinivas Reddy moderated the session.