The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Tirupur- a litmus test for politicians

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Friday, Apr 17, 2009
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Tirupur- a litmus test for politicians

R Vimal Kumar

Long-pending demands yet to be addressed

Tirupur: Spread over six Assembly segments, the newly-constituted Tirupur Lok Sabha constituency is all set to pose a litmus test for politicians.

The constituency, born after the recent delimitation exercise, has 9,87,630 voters (5,05,352 men and 4,82,278 women) rearing to exercise their franchise in the forthcoming polls.

Assembly segment-wise, there are 1,63,347 electors (82,520 male and 80,827 female) in Perundurai; 1,81,461 voters (92,085 male and 89,376 female) in Bhavani; 1,60,913 voters (82,017 male and 78,896 female) in Anthiyur; 1,68,814 voters (88,571 male and 80,243 female) in Tirupur North; 1,20,456 voters (63,008 male and 57,448 female) in Tirupur South and 1,92,639 voters (97,151 male and 95,488 female) in Gobichettipalayam.

The constituency offers very little room for psephologists to discuss the vicissitudes of electoral battles from the past.

However, candidates entering the poll fray will have to answer the electors’ queries on why development remained elusive in some of the Assembly constituencies and how they are going to overcome the lacunae in infrastructure such as extremely poor roads and erratic drinking water distribution across the constituency besides the high level of pollution in Tirupur city.

Despite National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) identifying Anthiyur as a backward block in its Potential Linked Credit Plan almost a decade ago owing to lack of development in infrastructure, economic and social fronts in the area, the capital absorption and ground-level credit flow still remain extremely poor in the region.

Similarly, the long-pending demands of predominant agrarian community in Gobichettipalayam and Bhavani areas for better support prices for turmeric and banana crops are yet to be addressed.

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