Hyderabad: The BJP which won just one seat in the 2018 Telangana assembly polls, has almost doubled its vote share and bettered its seat tally in the southern state in the hustings that comes months ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha polls.
The saffron party’s vote share surged from 7 per cent in 2018 to 13.88 per cent in the present assembly polls even as its number of seats has gone up to eight. The party also won two by-polls, giving it three members in the outgoing assembly.
K Venkata Ramana Reddy emerged as a giant killer by defeating Chief Minister and BRS supremo K Chandrasekhar Rao and Telangana PCC chief Revanth Reddy in Kamareddy.
He vanquished his nearest rival KCR by a margin of 6,741 votes.
However, on the flip side, all the three saffron party Lok Sabha members were defeated.
Controversial legislator T Raja Singh is the only BJP candidate from the city who won in 2018 assembly polls and has repeated his feat this time. He retained his Goshamahal seat for the third time in a row.
BJP’s firebrand MP and ex-state chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar lost to BRS rival Gangula Kamalakar Reddy by 3,163 votes.
Nizamabad MP D Arvind lost to his BRS rival Kalvakuntla Sanjay by over 10,000 votes.
Soyam Bapurao lost to BRS’ Anil Jadav.
The BJP’s promise of making a BC candidate as chief minister also didn’t seem to cut ice with the voters.
While the BJP was seen as a principal challenger to the BRS earlier, the perception changed after Congress gained momentum following the Karnataka elections in May this year.
The allegations of a tacit understanding between the BRS and BJP, especially with regard to the Delhi excise policy case in which Chief Minister KCR’s daughter Kavitha faced some allegations, had weakened the BJP, making anti-establishment votes consolidate in favour of Congress in the polls.
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