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On 11 April, in the first phase of this general election, Telangana will vote to elect 17 representatives to the next Lok Sabha. Yet, even as the rest of the country is gripped with election fervour and speculation, there is very little of it in Telangana. Yes, the rallies are on, and the campaign speeches too – but unlike in other parts of India, there isn’t much of a doubt here as to what the outcome of the polls will be.
The funny bit is, even many of those candidates who managed to defeat the TRS in the recent Assembly elections in December 2018 will openly tell you so. The reason? Because they’ve now joined the TRS.
In the Assembly polls, the Congress managed to win 19 seats out of 119, a far cry from the dominating TRS tally of 88.
Dr E Venkatesu, professor of Political Science at the University of Hyderabad and coordinator for CSDS-Lokniti in AP and Telangana, tells The Quint,
Speaking to The Quint, TRS MP Kalvakuntla Kavitha argues that the scheme in Telangana is more significant than the one launched by the Centre.
On the back of social security pensions to widows and persons with disabilities, financial assistance to weavers and beedi workers, schemes like 'Kalyana Lakshmi' and 'Shaadi Mubarak' under which girls are provided with an assistance of Rs 1 lakh each for their marriage, KCR’s approval ratings have remained intact.
On the other hand, the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh and the formation of Telangana made Chandrababu Naidu and his Telugu Desam Party unwelcome in Telangana. Naidu was seen as the representative of the people of Andhra, and not of Telangana.
The TDP had contested 72 seats in 2014, with a vote share of 14.55%. In 2018, it contested only 13 seats and the party’s vote share slipped to 3.5%.
The Congress went down from 21 seats in 2014 to 19 in 2018, but with most of their MLAs walking out of the party and willing to face re-election on TRS tickets, they can hardly provide any strong opposition to the TRS here.
After joining TRS, Congress MLA from Yellareddy, Jajala Surender, said that there was a growing distance between the grand old party and the people of the state.
If there is some hope that the Congress can salvage from a state where roughly 53% of its MLAs have left the party, that hope lies in vote share statistics.
In 2014, the Congress polled 25.02% of the vote share after contesting 119 seats and winning 21 of them. In 2018, however, the Congress was part of the Maha Kootami (People’s Front) alliance along with the TDP, CPI and Telangana Jana Samithi. So, the Congress contested in only 100 seats, including friendly contests in four seats.
The difference this time though, is that with the TDP whittled down to a marginal presence, the TRS has picked up their vote share and gone up to 46.9% in the Assembly election in December 2018.
In the 2018 polls, the TRS won 97 lakh votes and the Congress received 58 lakh. The BJP received 14 lakh votes and came third in terms of total votes polled. However, the party was joint fifth in terms of number of seats won, having managed to wrest only one Assembly constituency.
So, the difference between the Congress in second place and the BJP in third is huge. The Congress is still the primary Opposition in the state. If it seeks to revive itself, it will have to do so by first keeping its leaders within the party fold. Anti-incumbency in a newly formed state may take a while to come about, especially in the face of popular welfare policies by the state government.
Barring the one seat in Hyderabad, which TRS ally and AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi is expected to comfortably retain, there are 16 seats which KCR’s party hopes to win. The 18.5% difference in vote share, as polled in December, between the TRS and its strongest opponent the Congress, shows that that is a distinct possibility.
With Rahul Gandhi having come to campaign in Telangana only twice in the run-up to the 2019 polls, covering four Lok Sabha constituencies, and a no-show from Sonia Gandhi, it seems the Congress too is resigned to that possibility.
If a candidate like former Union minister Renuka Choudhury, who is contesting for the Congress from Khammam, can pull off an upset, the party will be more than happy. But the party leadership’s lack of focus on the state has made it clear that it doesn’t really fancy its chances in Telangana.
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