The ruling Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Telangana shared honours in the Lok Sabha elections, winning eight seats each with the other seat — Hyderabad — going to AIMIM. The main Opposition Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) drew a blank.
For the Congress and the BJP it was time to celebrate with the two parties doubling their tally of 2019 elections as their candidates secured record margins of victory. As many as 11 candidates secured a majority of over 1 lakh votes with Congress nominee from Nalgonda, Kunduru Raghuveer Reddy, securing the highest margin of 5.59 lakh.
Surprisingly, nowhere did the BRS candidates put a semblance of fight as the final figures started coming out. In the 2019 elections, BRS had won nine seats, BJP four, Congress three and the MIM one.
The clear takeaway from the results was the partial polarisation witnessed in north and central Telangana, where the BJP put up a good fight and retained some of the seats it had held in 2019. The Congress’ six-month rule in the State was put to test and it came out triumphant in eight seats, particularly in the south Telangana region.
The Congress won the Nalgonda, Bhongir, Khammam, Mahabubabad (ST), Warangal SC, Zaheerabad and Nagarkurnool SC reserved seats with impressive margins. All these constituencies during the December 2023 State Assembly elections had returned Congress candidates, and their presence boosted the candidates of the party’s Lok Sabha nominees.
For the BJP, its candidates retained the Adilabad, Karimnagar, Nizamabad and Secunderabad seats and wrested the Chevella, Mahabubnagar, Medak and Malkajgiri constituencies.
It was Narendra Modi’s charisma that worked for the BJP in north and central Telangana, as the results reveal. Party candidates during the campaign openly sought support for BJP, asking people to vote for the party “looking at Modi’s face”.
The communal polarisation in constituencies like Nizamabad, Adilabad and Karimnagar seats with sizeable minority population was amply witnessed and the margin of victory of the BJP candidates only reflected the way the voters had backed the saffron party.
The urban constituencies like Malkajgiri, Chevella and Secunderabad also saw the BJP getting full backing of the voters. Mahabubnagar was the only seat where the see-saw battle between the BJP and the Congress culminated with the former winning by a slender margin. The oft-repeated slogan of the BJP leaders that they would do away with Muslim reservations caught the attention of the majority community voters.
The disastrous performance of BRS since the Assembly elections has continued as its candidates could not match the pace of their political rivals. With each passing round, the BRS candidates continued to be relegated to the third place.
It would need a lot of introspection by party leaders to analyse what went wrong. BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao said this was a passing phase and the party had faced such situations on earlier occasions. “We will rise again as a Phoenix,” he said thanking the party cadres, who had worked hard during the election campaign.
Another significant outcome was the defeat of turncoats fielded by the BJP and the Congress. Several leaders from the BRS had crossed over to these two parties and contested the elections. Voters, however, ignored them, reposing faith in other candidates.
