Days after the announcement of Telangana election schedule, dozens of campaign vehicles are getting finishing touches at the NTR Stadium in Hyderabad. The open ground, which is more a grassless public park than a sporting arena, is filled with sounds of hammers, cutters, blowtorches as workers go about their paces in a choreographed sequence.
“Only the Bharat Rashtra Samithi has announced its candidates and most of the orders are from that party. We have already finished and dispatched campaign vehicles of Siddipet, Miryalaguda, Kaushik Reddy’s vehicles are ready,” says D. Chanda Rao, whose firm is working on the vehicles.
The fabrication work on the site is the hub for transforming vehicles for elections in Telangana from the time when actor N.T. Rama Rao stepped into the political arena. NTR stormed to power in united Andhra Pradesh riding a modified Chevrolet van labelled as Chaitanya Ratham (awareness vehicle). That van was modified by Chanda Rao’s father Eashwar Rao.
