In KCR's Telangana, BJP and Congress make gains

Exactly four months after an emphatic victory in Assembly elections, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) came up with a slogan for the general elections. “Car, sir, padhaharu, Delhi sarkar.” Car is the TRS symbol; sir here means TRS supremo K. Chandrashekar Rao, Padhaharu means number 16, signifying the MP seats they aim to win and Delhi sarkar is to tell the voters where they are headed to with their support. 

The slogan was catchy and rhyming but it did not cut ice with the voters. Telangana Chief Minister KCR’s Federal Front dreams and Delhi ambitions vanished in one-go due to the unprecedented NDA surge. The TRS performance back home was nothing great to rave about. There are 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana and the party could manage to win just nine. The party supported MIM’s Asaduddin Owaisi in Hyderabad seat while eyeing the rest. 

After the Assembly elections, KCR’s son and well-known face of the party, K.T. Rama Rao, was elevated within the party ranks as he was made the working president of the TRS. While he called the shots during general elections, KCR was more focused on taking up an important role at the Centre and toured the country to make himself relevant.

On Thursday, the results threw up a surprise as KCR’s daughter and one-time MP, K. Kavitha, lost Nizamabad by a margin of more than 50,000 votes. Another close confidante of KCR, B. Vinod Kumar, who was vocal about the TRS stand at national level, also lost his Karimnagar seat badly. 

K.T. Rama Rao, who was touted to take over the CM chair in case KCR moved north, held a press meet on Thursday evening. 

“We won a majority number of seats. We will fulfil our responsibility to fight for our rights. Our party aimed for 16 seats and we worked hard for it but in democracy, we should accept people’s verdict. We will introspect on our performance.”

The BJP, by winning their highest-ever tally of four seats, created records of sorts in the state. The BJP candidates, who were considered weak since none of them has ever won a Lok Sabha election, trounced heavyweights. To a great extent, Modi factor as well as local issues worked in the favour of Kishan Reddy in Secunderabad, D. Aravind in Nizamabad, B. Sanjay in Karimnagar and S. Bapu Rao in Adilabad. The saffron party had won just one Assembly seat in last year’s elections but this time they emerged as the strongest opposition to the TRS.

The Congress, too, could manage some gains. Telangana Congress president Uttam Kumar Reddy won from Nalgonda. Other winners include Congress working president A. Revanth Reddy and Komatireddy Venkat Reddy. These two senior leaders lost in the Assembly elections held last year.

The national parties emerged strong in these elections even after they had weakened due to mass desertions to the ruling party.

From the onset of election season, the TRS campaign has been lacklustre. The party leaders blame the burn-out to consecutive elections in the last few months. However, political analysts feel that the results are a reminder to KCR and his partymen that people are not happy with his style of functioning. A farmer in Nizamabad said the vote was against the KCR family than for the local BJP candidate. Though there are no elections in the near future, this is not exactly a great start to K.T. Rama Rao’s innings as a working president.