HYDERABAD: The day of judgment has arrived. At 8 a.m. on Thursday, the EVMs will begin throwing up the poll verdict for which all the parties have been waiting with bated breath. Buoyed with the landslide victory in the Assembly elections in December last year, the TRS is expecting a repeat performance in the Lok Sabha elections. With exit polls predicting another wave of the pink surge, it hopes to win all the 16 seats and its ally MIM, the remaining Hyderabad seat.
But at the national level, the TRS still hopes that the exit polls would go wide off the mark and provide space for it in Delhi to play a key role in the formation of the next government. It hopes there would be a hung House so that Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao could move the pieces on the board in forming a non-BJP and non-Congress government.
The Chief Minister has been keenly watching the fast-changing patterns in political kaleidoscope at the Centre and is keeping his powder dry to take the plunge if the winds blow in his favour.
The Congress, however, is putting up a brave front, claiming that its performance may not be as bad as the TRS projects. It knows that it is a do-or-die battle but does not come off the high horse to admit it officially. The BJP State leaders, on the other hand, aver that they would win one or two seats in Telangana.