HYDERABAD: Right from the start, both the Bharatiya Janata Party and Telangana Rashtra Samiti have made it clear that it’s more than just a bypoll in Huzurabad. A victory for its candidate Eatala Rajender, says the saffron party, would be a sign of things to come. Party leaders say it would silence those who claim that the 2018 Assembly elections were won solely on the face value of TRS supremo K Chandrasekhar Rao.
A P Jithender Reddy, chairman of BJP’s Huzurabad Election Management Committee, shares as per “intelligence reports”, 70 per cent of voters in Huzurabad are with the BJP. BJP spokesperson Dr S Prakash Reddy tells TNIE that if Rajender wins, TRS MLAs would be worried about their prospects in the 2023 elections. This makes the election important not just for the BJP, but more so for the TRS, he says.
BJP MLA Raghunandan Rao, who won Dubbaka byelection, says that Finance Minister T Harish Rao was resorting to “excesses” in Huzurabad, just as he did in Dubbaka. “The result will therefore be on similar lines,” Raghunandan says.
The sudden influx of schemes like Dalit Bandhu, sheep distribution and reduction of the age of pensioners to 57 is all the result of Rajender’s resignation, Raghunandan emphasises. He countered Harish Rao’s claims that Rajender had not done anything for Huzurabad despite representing it for six terms. If Rajender, who was No.2 in TRS till recently holding the Health and Finance portfolios was not given a chance to develop his constituency by the ruling party, would anybody else be given a free hand by TRS, he queries. “People are aware of how a good man like Eatala Rajender was falsely implicated by KCR, whose dirty tricks won’t work with the people anymore,” Raghunandan says.