Hyderabad: With the exception of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) has steamrolled the opposition and won almost every poll with a big margin. And with the upcoming Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) polls round the corner, the election will be another test for the opposition in Telangana, which has been severely weakened for various reasons.
And if TRS leaders are to be believed, then their party is all set to repeat its 2015 performance when it won a whopping 99 seats out of the total 150. Its “friendly” ally, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) won 44 from the Old City, while the Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which is now almost defunct, were left with almost nothing.
“We are expecting to win 95 seats, as that is what our internal surveys show us. If you compare us to the previous governments, clearly the TRS has done some work. People also understand that COVID-19 has affected the world and not just Telangana. During the pandemic, flyovers, underpasses and roads were laid across the city and the GHMC’s disaster response team also acted fast,” said a TRS leader from Hyderabad, who did not want to be quoted.
The same confidence however can’t be expected from the Congress or the BJP, the two parties that are currently vying for the second place against the TRS. While the BJP in fact surprised everyone by winning four (out of 17) seats during the 2019 Lok Sabha polls with a 20% vote share, it has however not been able to repeat its performance in other local body elections.
“I don’t see anything happening (for the BJP) in real terms. Basically, when you have a triangular fight, you need to have some kind of anti-incumbency. BJP used to have votes in the urban areas earlier thanks to its alliance with the TDP (which broke up with it a few years ago). Due to its split, our vote share declined and the Congress’s vote also shifted to the TRS (in the 2015 GHMC polls),” acceded a BJP leader who did not want to be quoted.
The BJP leader in fact pointed out that the BJP earlier (with TDP alliance) had a good vote share thanks to Andhra and north Indian migrants in the city. “We have another block of Hindus even in the Old City, but even that has gone to the TRS. The issue we have in Telangana is that field level candidates are not active,” he lamented.
In the 2015 GHMC polls, the BJP managed to win only four seats. As for the Congress, like in 2015, it seems that they will remain a non-entity given that the party has been severely weakened due to defections to the TRS after both the 2014 and 2018 state polls. In fact, post the 2018 state elections, 12 out of its 19 MLAs defected, to the TRS, led by chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR).
It may be noted that both the Congress and BJP, in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, had managed to shock the TRS by winning three and four parliamentary seats out of 17 in the state. The TRS had won 9, while the AIMIM, as always bagged the Hyderabad seat.
However, the TRS made up for it by winning more than 100 of the 139 municipalities (120) and corporations (9) that went to polls in January in the local urban body elections. Out of the total of 3,535 wards, the TRS won about 60 per cent of it, leaving both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) far behind.
Prior to that, the TRS won 3,548 (61 per cent) of the Mandal Parishad Territorial Constituencies (MPTC) out of the total 5,817 and a staggering 449 (83%) of the 538 Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituencies (ZPTC).
“I have a feeling that the TRS will win 60-70% of the seats, as they still have some goodwill. People are getting to see their work. State IT and Urban Development Minister KTR still is someone the urban voters trust. BJP as of now is still looking for people with credibility however,” said political analyst Palwai Raghavendra Reddy.