Hyderabad: Congress, on Friday, November 14, registered a thumping win at the Jubilee Hills by election, defeating the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) by nearly 25,000 votes. The bypoll was crucial for both parties, with the latter seeking a political revival after its defeat in the 2023 Assembly elections. Friday’s result shows BRS will have to wait for now.
Congress candidate V Naveen Yadav secured 98,988 votes, while BRS’s Maganti Sunitha got 74,259 votes, a very large margin indeed. Many exit polls had predicted a tight contest between them, but the result surprisingly turned into a one-sided verdict.
This victory marks Congress’s second MLA in the Greater Hyderabad region after Secunderabad Cantonment.
Scenes of jubilation broke out at the Congress office as party workers lit firecrackers and cheered the result, their celebrations echoing across the city. With the upcoming GHMC election, this win has given a boost to the Grand Old Party.
The bypoll was necessitated by the death of BRS MLA Maganti Gopinath in June this year. As many as 58 candidates were in the fray in the by-election caused by the death of sitting MLA Maganti Gopinath of BRS.
Gopinath was a three-time MLA of Jubilee Hills, having won the 2023 Telangana Legislative Assembly election by 80,549 votes. He defeated former Indian cricket captain and now Telangana minorities welfare minister Mohammed Azharuddin by a margin of 16,337 votes.
He died of a heart attack in a Hyderabad hospital on June 8, six days after his 62nd birthday.
BRS fielding Maganthi Sunitha, hoping to woo voters through sympathy, an age-old political strategy used in elections globally. However, Friday’s result suggests this factor alone was not strong enough for the pink party.
The bypoll results reflect a deeper shift in Hyderabad’s urban voter base. It has also exposed BRS’s struggle to regain momentum after 2023, raising questions about its organisational strength in key city constituencies ahead of the GHMC and local body elections.
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