Poll effect: Bus fares touch the sky, as people go for voting

Hyderabad: With voting day around the corner, several people residing in the city of Hyderabad are flocking to their hometowns to cast their vote for the upcoming elections. Cashing on this urgency, the bus fares, especially for private transport services, have skyrocketed on the weekend with increase in demand.
According to the passengers, the charges for a six to seven hours journey are anywhere between Rs.2000 to Rs.3000 per ticket, which is almost equivalent to a flight service. Several private travellers are charging more than Rs.2500 for a sleeper service and around Rs.2000 for a non-sleeper service, which is way more than normal prices.
With Saturday and Sunday being the weekend before voting, the train services are also fully packed and several users who have planned and booked their tickets way in advance are also left in waitlist mode. On the other hand, people with personal vehicles are also going in them, and traffic jams are also being created at the Toll Gates.
How can middle class people vote in such circumstances?
As the weekend is fully booked, some of the users have also preponed their journeys to miss the crowd. A passenger, Radhika K, who travelled from Secunderabad to Vijayawada said that “I had to go to Machilipatnam to cast my vote, and when I checked, all the tickets in the TSRTC were full in the weekend, as a result, I had preponed the journey to Thursday night. If not public transport, we are only left with Private travels, whose cost is anywhere around 1800 to 2500 just for a journey of six hours. How can a middle class person afford these kinds of prices and still go for voting?”
It is to be noted that the city of Hyderabad also has a significant portion of Andhra people residing in various areas such as Kukatpally, KPHB, Nizampet, BHEL, Lingampalli and spread across other areas of the city, the buses leading Andhra areas such as Vijayawada, Rajahmundry, Kurnool among others.
While Telangana is going for the parliamentary elections on May 13, the state of Andhra Pradesh is going for both Lok Sabha and Assembly elections on the same day on May 13. The results of these elections would be announced on June 4, 2024.