A mixed bag in Telangana

Congress, BJP emerge stronger in State after poor show in Assembly polls

The results of the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections were mixed bag in Telangana.

Contrary to expectations, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) bagged seven of the 17 seats where the elections were held, upsetting the calculations of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi, which was hopeful of making a clean sweep along with its friendly party Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen. The MIM retained its lone Hyderabad Lok Sabha seat, where its president Asaduddin Owaisi trounced the BJP candidate with a margin of over 2 lakh votes.

Clear leads

The trend became evident as the results started coming in with Congress and BJP candidates established clear leads over their TRS rivals from the first round itself. An outstanding feature of the Lok Sabha elections was the performance of the BJP. The party that had been decimated in the Assembly polls six months ago, winning a lone seat, Goshamahal, in the city, won four Lok Sabha seats, probably for the first time in Telangana, that too with comfortable margins.

BJP’s former State president G. Kishan Reddy trounced his nearest Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) rival T. Saikiran Yadav by close to 60,000 votes while the party’s Adilabad nominee Soyam Bapu Rao won with over 90,000 votes. The Nizamabad election dashed the hopes of the TRS as BJP nominee Dharmapuri Arvind continued his lead over sitting MP and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s daughter K. Kavitha all through. The situation was no different in the Karimnagar Lok Sabha seat where a new entrant Bandi Sanjay Kumar of the BJP trounced TRS candidate and Mr. Rao’s close confidant B. Vinod Kumar in the constituency, which had been a stronghold of the ruling party in the past few elections.

The biggest upset for the ruling party was, however, in Nalgonda and Bhongir Lok Sabha constituencies of the erstwhile Nalgonda district where Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy and senior leader K. Venkat Reddy emerged victorious. TPCC working president A. Revanth Reddy of the Congress, who lost the Assembly elections in his native Kodangal constituency, emerged winner from the Malkajgiri seat.

Tough fight

The three victories as well as the tough fight put up by Congress candidate in Chevella Lok Sabha seat Konda Vishweswhar Reddy against his TRS rival G. Ranjit Reddy infused fresh life into the grand old party which had suffered the most in the previous Assembly elections held four months before the Lok Sabha polls on December 7. The TRS on its behalf continued its victory run in Warangal, Mahabubabad, Mahabubnagar, Nagarkurnool, Medak, Zaheerabad, Khammam and Peddapalli constituencies while it managed to scrape through in the Chevella constituency with a slender margin of around 9,000 votes.

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