Campaigning for Apr 11 polls to LS, assly in AP ends

: The acerbic campaigning for the high stakes simultaneous April 11 elections to the Lok Sabha and the state Assembly ended in Andhra Pradesh Tuesday.

The fortnight-long electioneering had been anything but decent, with top leaders of the main contesting parties TDP and YSR Congress often hurling the choicest expletives at each other.

Elections for all 25 Lok Sabha and 175 Assembly seats will be held simultaneously in one go from 7 AM to 6 PM on April 11.

Telugu Desam Party president and Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu's campaign theme centered around bashing the "evil trio" of (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi, (Telangana Chief Minister) K Chandrasekhar Rao and (YSR Congress president) Y S Jaganmohan Reddy.

He called them names and went to the extent of branding Jagan a "hardcore criminal."
When it came to appeasing voters though, Naidu, Jagan and Kalyan tried to outdo each other by announcing a slew of freebies like babyshowers, laptops, homes, LPG cylinders, crop insurance, education, healthcare, medicines, bicycles, bus rides and virtually everything else