The Telangana verdict in the Lok Sabha elections proves one point beyond any reasonable doubt. The voters have come of age unlike in other states. They know the very purpose for which Assembly and Parliament elections take place and they have the ability to differentiate chalk from cheese.
By electing 88 of 119 TRS candidates to the Assembly in 2018 elections, the people had declared their faith in TRS. They felt that it is the right party among those on the menu card since it has a powerful leader in K Chandrasekhar Rao unlike in Congress and the BJP. Now that the exercise is over, the people had to use their wisdom in choosing who should represent them in Lok Sabha, which they seemed to have done on right lines to a large extent.
The TRS has won nine seats though it is a regional party apparently because of a growing feeling among the people that there might be a hung Parliament this time and in which case KCR might play a role at the national level in formation of the next government. But in the rest of the constituencies (barring Hyderabad where election of MIM was fait accompli even before the schedule was announced), the people seemed to have a doubt over anti-BJP and anti-Congress formation taking shape and preferred Congress in three and BJP in four constituencies as they happened to be national parties which alone could form the government.
The TRS loss, was also apparently on account of lack of effort by the pink party in shoring up support from those who might have been in a fix over whom they should support - TRS or national parties in addition to federal front concept not having many takers in the fast-changing patterns in political kaleidoscope at national level which led to people beginning to look at the BJP or the Congress.
At least four ministers seemed to have taken it easy convinced that KCR’s magic would make the party nominees win the elections hands down. For instance, in Endowments Minister A Indrakaran Reddy’s Nirmal segment, BJP candidate for Adilabad Soyam Bapu Rao secured a majority of over 14,000 votes. In fact, the TRS ended up third in this segment, with Congress jockeying itself up to second position. Similarly in Sanathnagar segment, represented in the Assembly by Minister T Srinivas Yadav, BJP candidate for Secunderabad Lok Sabha seat G Kishan Reddy secured a majority of over 14,000 votes. In fact it is Srinivasa Yadav’s son Sai Kiran who was pitted against Kishan Reddy in the Lok Sabha election on TRS ticket.
In Excise Minister V Srinivasa Goud’s Mahbubnagar segment, BJP candidate for Mahbubangar Lok Sabha DK Aruna secured a majority of over 4,000 votes while in Transport Minister V Prashant Reddy’s Balkonda segment, BJP candidate for Nizamabad D Arvind secured a majority of over 11,000 votes.
Having satisfied that returning KCR for a second term in the Assembly elections was enough, in several constituencies, the voters seemed to have looked to Congress, with its manifesto capturing their attention. The minimum income scheme of Rs 72,000 per year, 34 lakh jobs in the public sector, law against hate crimes and so on seemed to have found traction with them.
Though the Congress had no great leadership in the Sate, yet people helped the party develop green shoots after its debacle in the 2018 Assembly elections. The party, had won three Lok Sabha seats, lost two seats narrowly and had given a good fight in about eight.
Similarly, the BJP too sprang from the shadows of its humiliating defeat in the assembly polls in which it won only one seat, lost security deposits in 103 of the 119 seats. The sudden resurgence of the saffron power which helped the party corner four Lok Sabha seats is attributed mainly to the Modi wave as people seemed to have decided that preferring BJP to the TRS was a better bet as Modi was all set to capture power, piggybacking on gains that he had logged in with raids on terror hideouts in Pakistan to avenge Pulwama killings and his heady potion of Hindutva-laced development.
The results have left a lot of home work for the three parties to ace electoral tests in future. TRS has to work to retrieve its lost ground while the Congress and BJP, make fresh inroads into TRS bastions.