Tally Up, but Heavyweights Defeated: How Did BJP Perform in Telangana Elections?

The biggest win for the party, perhaps, was its Kamareddy candidate Venkata Ramana Reddy defeating KCR and Revanth.

As most exit polls had predicted, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) increased its tally in Telangana, albeit in single digits. The party, which had three seats in the Assembly (Goshamahal, Dubbaka, and Huzurabad), has eight seats now.

(Photo: The Quint)

As most exit polls had predicted, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) increased its tally in Telangana, albeit in single digits. The party, which had three seats in the Assembly (Goshamahal, Dubbaka, and Huzurabad), has eight seats now.

Eight is a big number, considering that the party had won only one seat (Goshamahal) in the 2018 Assembly elections. The biggest win for the party on 3 December, perhaps, was its Kamareddy candidate Venkata Ramana Reddy defeating two bigwigs – BRS' K Chandrasekhar Rao and Congress' Revanth Reddy – by a margin of over 6,000 votes.

But is this victory for the party as sweet as it looks? To understand that, let's take a look at the winners and losers.

How Bigwigs Performed

The BJP has primarily won seats in north Telangana this time, namely Sirpur (Palvai Harish Babu), Adilabad (Payal Shanker), Nirmal (Alleti Maheshwar Reddy), Armur (Paidi Rakesh Reddy), Kamareddy (Venkata Ramana Reddy), Nizamabad (D Suryanarayana), and Mudhole (Ram Rao Pawar).

BJP leader T Raja Singh also came to power for the third time in Goshamahal, which falls under Hyderabad's Old City.

The Quint had previously reported that the party would be focusing on about 20 seats, especially in north Telangana and in the Greater Hyderabad region, where the party aimed to 'polarise votes' using the Hindu nationalism card.

But interestingly, the three sitting MPs fielded by the party – namely Karimnagar MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar, Adilabad MP Soyam Bapu Rao, and Nizamabad MP Arvind Dharmapuri – all lost the seats they were contesting from.

Sanjay Kumar, an OBC leader who served as the party's state chief until recently, lost to sitting BRS MLA Gangula Kamalakar for the third time since 2014. Sanjay Kumar was a vocal critic of KCR and is also a serial hate speech offender.

Meanwhile, Arvind Dharmapuri, who had defeated KCR's daughter K Kavitha in the Lok Sabha elections from Nizamabad, lost to Kalvakuntla Sanjay, who is also from KCR's family.

Another heavyweight who lost both the seats he contested from was Eatala Rajender, who took on KCR in Gajwel. He lost his incumbent seat of Huzurabad to BRS' P Kaushik Reddy.

M Raghunandan Rao, who won the Dubbaka bypoll on a BJP ticket in 2019, also lost his seat to BRS' Kotta Prabhakar Reddy.

How BJP Lost Its Momentum

The BJP was on a meteoric rise after its victories in the Dubbaka by-election and the Greater Hyderabad Municipal polls. But that momentum quickly died down after the party's loss to the Congress in Karnataka earlier this year.

This was followed by the unprecedented removal of Bandi Sanjay Kumar as the party's president. Sanjay Kumar was the face of a rising OBC leader, and OBCs are an important vote bloc of the party. His removal made the BJP's promise of bringing an OBC chief minister quite empty.

The strong narrative of a BJP-BRS tie-up also meant that that the anti-incumbency votes would go to the Congress and not the BJP. Moreover, the Congress is a party that has deep roots in the state, making it easier for people to choose the party.

Moreover, the BJP's promises and Hindutva pitch fell flat as far as most of Telangana was concerned. The promises of free darshan to Ayodhya temple and changing of names were not something that could sway the Telugu-speaking population.