Team Herald
PONDA: Increasing COVID-19 cases and positivity rate has dampened election campaigns of the politicians. Very few politicians are doing door-to-door campaign and vehicles with screens are rarely seen. Poll campaign came to almost a grinding halt, which was at peak fifteen days ago.
With elections nearing, all politicians and supporters are waiting for COVID-19 daily cases slump and normalise the situation so that normal public meetings, campaigns with supporters can began.
The aspirants of various political parties, who had just started to campaign are now in double mind whether to go or not for door-to-door campaign due to steep rise in COVID-19 cases since past few days. Voters too avoid meeting the politicians coming at their door steps and preferred listening to them from a distance due to which politicians are unable to interact with voters on development agendas they want to discuss with them.
Since past two months, before elections were declared, election fever prevailed all over Ponda Taluka. People had witnessed heavy campaigning of the politicians as the whole Ponda was smeared with posters.
Later there were corner meetings as well as huge rallies and public meetings with huge crowd of several thousand people witnessed at Shiroda, Ponda and Priol. People use to attend the meeting to support their leaders jumping from one party to another, but now it has come to a standstill. The election code of conduct also put restriction on gatherings in public meetings.
It also hit earningd (daily wages) of poor people campaigning for polticians who during month long campaigning were earning Rs 500 to 1000 per day for day long campaign in constituency. They are also hoping daily numbers of daily COVID-19 cases normalise and election campaigns starts again.
