Hyderabad: Voting for the high-stakes bypoll to Munugode Assembly constituency in Telangana would be held on Thursday and the contest is is crucial for all major parties in the state, the ruling TRS, opposition BJP, and Congress.
Polling would be held from 7 am to 6 pm. Over 2.41 lakh voters would exercise their franchise at 298 polling stations spread across the constituency.
The Election Commission has made elaborate arrangements for polling, including deployment of 3,366 state police and 15 companies of central security personnel. Webcasting would be done from all the polling stations, official sources said.
The bypoll has been necessitated by the resignation of sitting Congress MLA Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy from the party and his post in August. He has joined the BJP and is seeking re-election.
While 47 candidates are in the fray, the main contest is confined to Raj Gopal Reddy (BJP), former MLA Kusukuntla Prabhakar Reddy of TRS and Congress’ Palvai Sravanthi.
The bypoll assumed great political significance as the winner would have an edge over others ahead of next year’s Legislative Assembly polls in Telangana.
The TRS, recently renamed as Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS), aims to demonstrate its dominance in state politics and go national with a big win here.
The BJP, meanwhile, hopes to give a push to its plans to emerge as the alternative to TRS with a victory in Munugode.
The saffron party is on a high following its victories in Dubbak and Huzurabad Assembly bypolls and also the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) election during the last two years.
For the beleaguered Congress, it is almost a do-or-die battle in view of its below par performances in the 2014 and 2018 Assembly elections and the subsequent bypolls.
If Congress loses, it would be a double whammy for the party as Munugode was its sitting seat.
The prospects of TRS got a boost with the CPI and CPI(M) announcing support to the former and actively campaigning for its victory.
Munugode had been a Left stronghold with CPI winning the segment in 1985, 1989, 1994, 2004 and 2009.
Counting of polled votes would be taken up on November 6.
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