A town in slumber ahead of T Bypoll

BANSWADA: The road to Banswada cuts through monsoon- enriched green fields and reservoirs.It’s a pleasing journey of 165 km from the capital.But once you set foot in this town of 50,000, the ambient smell is of a town where sanitation workers have gone to sleep.The bustling bus station is surrounded by uncleared garbage and construction rubble.The roads are dusty and pockmarked.In Swarnakar Colony, a Ganesh pandal witnesses a carousel of festivity even as a smelly drain flows by.A byelection is coming up on Oct.13 but the netas haven’t woken up, perhaps because, on the face of it, the byelection is a foregone conclusion.The last incumbent, Pocharam Srinivas Reddy, now a member of the TRS, is the favourite, on the credit of ‘sacrificing’ his seat in the Assembly because he wants a separate state of Telangana.Twelve such ‘sacrificers’ won similar byelections by thumping majorities in July last year.Observers tip Pocharam to do likewise this time, although the voters’ ardour for Telangana martyrs is said to have cooled somewhat since then.During the hiatus since those byelections, the protest camps have been lifted from the Ambedkar Chowrasta and the pink flags of the TRS that festooned the city last year have faded and fallen.Banswada is the fifth biggest town in Nizamabad district, but it’s still a gram panchayat.Its term ran out in August, so the town is in the care of a special officer.With local busybodies temporarily out of work, the streets of Banswada bear all the signs of an official machinery that has ground to a halt.Even the houses of local TDP and Congress leaders are surrounded in filth and debris.Locals say sanitation has gone to seed since that day.In street after street, Ganesh pandals lie amid the signs of government indolence.Officials may be in slumber, but with the monsoon turning vigorous, the populace, mainly agriculture-dependent have no such luxury.Rains in August brought tanks and reservoirs to the brim and the Manjeera is a happy brook.Stop a bystander and ask him what he thinks of the coming byelection, he’ll tell you he has no time right now for the khaddar gentry.