HYDERABAD: The Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) victory and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi’s (TRS) defeat in the Dubbaka bypoll appear to be indicative of the changing patterns in the political kaleidoscope in Telangana. The outcome of the bypoll has also seemed to have driven yet another nail in the Congress’ coffin as it lost its security deposit.
The keenly fought byelection exposed cracks in the TRS citadel as Dubbaka is in Siddipet, which is the home district of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, and the party’s campaign was spearheaded by his nephew and Finance Minister T Harish Rao. As the elections to two seats of the Telangana Legislative Council (Graduates) and the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation are also round the corner, there is enough reason for the TRS to worry on how it should rework its strategies to get back to being numero uno.
The defeat has come as a shocker to the pink party as it had not tasted reverses in any byelection held after the formation of Telangana State in 2014. In fact, in the recent bypoll in Huzurnagar, vacated by TPCC president N Uttam Kumar Reddy after his election to Lok Sabha in 2019, the TRS won hands down, confining the BJP to the fringes. Now, in the absence of any emotive issues, the TRS had banked on its welfare schemes to sail through the Dubbaka bypoll. Harish Rao had toured the constituency extensively after KCR set a target of getting a one-lakh majority for the TRS nominee. Though it had charismatic leaders, the anti-incumbency against the government had worked against the sitting MLA’s widow S Sujatha, who could not match her BJP rival Raghunandan Rao.
The BJP, after its dismal show in the 2018 Assembly elections, when it won only one seat (Goshamahal), rebounded in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections and picked up four seats, including Nizamabad, which was represented by KCR’s daughter Kavitha. An elated BJP State president Bandi Sanjay Kumar said: “Our next target is Sircilla (which KTR represents). This is the beginning of the end of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s tyranny and his family rule. The future is ours.”
For BJP candidate M Raghunandan Rao, defeating TRS nominee Solipeta Sujatha in Dubbaka was a sweet revenge as he had lost the TRS Assembly election in 2014 and 2018 from the constituency and the Lok Sabha election in 2019 from Medak (of which Dubbaka is part). The BJP, an underdog when the byelection was necessitated by the untimely death of incumbent Solipeta Ramalinga Reddy, quickly emerged as the dark horse and took everyone by surprise when Raghunandan Rao walked away with the electoral cake, leaving the TRS and Congress nominees gaping and fuming.
The BJP could turn the tables against the TRS after Bandi went on an overdrive, with a powerful campaign against the pink party and its USP — which was welfare schemes such as Rythu Bandhu, Aasara pensions, irrigation projects, 24x7 power supply.
The BJP State president had contended that a major portion of KCR’s munificence came from the Centre and the people should bear in mind that the TRS supremo was not giving money from his pocket but it was, in fact, their own money. The campaign was so fierce that even KCR reacted saying he would resign if the BJP proved its claim.
The BJP, under Bandi’s leadership, made the most of the adversity created allegedly by the TRS when it went to town over Raghunandan Rao’s relatives hoarding huge amounts of money for distribution among voters.
The BJP, which reacted violently to this, organised protests across the State, including in distant Khammam, that it was nothing but a campaign of calumny, a direct offshoot of frustration that they were losing the election. The saffron party’s strategy worked as it seemed to have whipped a sympathy wave in favour of Raghunandan Rao.
According to analysts, another factor that came in aid of the BJP was that TRS’ blistering campaign against it gave rise to a feeling that the saffron party’s stock was up and had reached a stage where it could even challenge it. This not only consolidated the BJP vote bank, but also chopped off a large chunk of the electorate, which was with the Congress, and also weaned away significant number of supporters from the TRS, who were not too happy with the current dispensation. Had the anti-TRS vote remained equally between the BJP and the Congress, it would have benefited the TRS. But the pink party’s aggressive posturing only lent credibility to the BJP, helping it to improve its base.In 2018, the BJP polled 13.7 per cent of the votes, which has now shot up to 38.47 per cent. The TRS voteshare then was 54.36 and has crashed to 37.81 per cent.