WARANGAL: Warangal Parliamentary constituency has for most of its existence been a safe seat for the Congress party. Since 1952, the grand old party’s candidates have won the seat eight times over 16 elections. Interestingly, the first ever winner of the seat was a candidate from the People’s Democratic Front. The Telugu Desam Party too has held Warangal like a fortress at different points of time, winning it a total of five times. But none of this history matters in 2019, as the Telangana Rashtra Samithi is all but sure of bagging Warangal just like it did so in 2014.
Warangal constituency has seen geographical changes over the years; it had subsumed the Hanamkonda Lok Sabha constituency in 2008. Incidentally, this was where former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao won in 1977 and 1984. In 2004 and 2008, when the statehood movement had not yet picked up momentum, Hanamkonda had elected a TRS candidate.
Post-2014, politics in Warangal have been quite unipolar. That year, TRS’ Kadiyam Srihari won with a massive majority of 3,92,574 votes. However, Srihari had to vacate the seat when he was summoned by Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao to occupy the deputy chief minister’s chair. In the 2015 by-poll, which was necessitated by Srihari’s resignation from the Lok Sabha, TRS fielded Pasunuri Dayakar who created history winning the constituency with the largest victory margin ever recorded in the State yet — Dayakar won with a majority of 4,59,092.
Warangal Parliamentary constituency comprises of seven Assembly segments - Station Ghanpur (SC), Palakurthi, Parkal, Warangal West, Warangal East, Wardhannapet (SC) and Bhupalapalli. It has 16,53,474 voters, 75,139 more than previous election. As many as 1,859 polling stations will be set up for voters on April 11. Around 1,140 are located in rural areas while 719 are in urban areas. Police have identified 260 polling stations as ‘critical’, where they would set up enhanced security. Over 90 of them are in Naxal affected areas in Bhupalpalli.
How Warangal became a TRS bastion
Post 2014, politics in Warangal have been quite unipolar. That year, TRS’ Kadiyam Srihari won with a massive majority of 3,92,574 votes. However, Srihari had to vacate the seat when he was summoned by CM K Chandhrasekhar Rao to occupy the deputy chief minister’s chair. In the 2015 by-poll, which was necessitated by Srihari’s resignation from the Lok Sabha, TRS fielded Pasunuri Dayakar who created history winning the constituency with the largest victory margin ever recorded in the State yet — 4,59,092. In fact, the figure was bigger than even KCR’s victory margin in Medak in 2014. This time, Dayakar wants the majority to exceed 5 lakh.
The contenders
TRS’ Pasunuri Dayakar (the incumbent MP), Congress’ D Sambaiah and BJP’s D Sambamurhty are perhaps the most prominent candidates this election. If one goes by TRS’ vote share in the 2018 Assembly elections, of nearly 56.23 per cent, Dayakar’s does seem like he is going to have an easy election ahead of him.