Hyderabad: Tension erupted between cadres of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) Choutuppal near Hyderabad during a road show held by BJP’s candidate Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy’s road show on Monday night.
The BJP candidate’s roadshow was suddenly obstructed by the TRS cadres, leading to a clash between the two parties.
Over 2.41 lakh voters would give their verdict in the by-poll to the Munugode Assembly constituency in Telangana on November 3, an election that is expected to influence the future course of state politics in the run-up to next year’s Legislative Assembly polls.
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 BJP with a victory in Munugode. The party is on a high following its victories in Dubbak and Huzurabad Assembly by-polls and also the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) election during the last two years.
Though as many as 47 candidates are in the fray, the main contest is among Rajagopal Reddy, who is seeking re-election on the BJP ticket, former MLA Kusukuntla Prabhakar Reddy of TRS and Congress’ Palvai Sravanthi.
While banking on the popularity of Raj Gopal Reddy, the BJP has deployed Union Minister G Kishan Reddy, state unit president and MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar, party MLAs Eatala Rajender and M Raghunandan Rao among other leaders for the campaign.
It was, however, the TRS that conducted an almost unheard-of campaign with several state ministers, a number of MLAs and other leaders canvassing in support of their candidate covering every inch of Munugode.
This has prompted the BJP to allege that the TRS has shifted the state secretariat to Munugode.
The TRS has attacked Raj Gopal Reddy by alleging that he had switched over to BJP out of consideration of business favours.
TRS Working President K T Rama Rao had announced that he would “adopt” Munugode and personally focus on its development.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission has posted teams of Income Tax, GST, besides two expenditure observers to check violations of the model code.
Campaigning will end this evening. The counting of votes would be taken up on November 6.
