Lok Sabha Election 2024: Malkajgiri constituency with highest voter count set for triangular contest

The Malkajgiri parliamentary constituency in Telangana is peculiar in more ways than one. It is the largest parliamentary constituency in the entire country in terms of voter count – 3.74 million of them, including 1.93 million men and 1.81 million women.

It is often referred to as “Mini India” because of its cultural diversity – it has people from all parts of India, besides encompassing one of the largest military cantonments of the country.

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The parliamentary constituency was until recently represented by Telangana Congress Committee president and present chief minister A Revanth Reddy, but none the MLAs who represent seven assembly segments under it — Malkajgiri, Medchal, Quthbullapur, Kukatpally, Uppal, LB Nagar, and Secunderabad Cantonment — are from the Congress. They belong to the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), which lost power to the Congress in the recent assembly elections.

None of the contestants representing three major political parties — Sunitha Mahender Reddy of the Congress, Eatala Rajender of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Ragidi Laxma Reddy of the BRS — hail from Malkajgiri; they are all non-locals.

Sunitha hails from Tandur in Ranga Reddy district and Rajender is from Huzurabad in Karimnagar district. Laxma Reddy is from Nalgonda, but settled in Uppal — in that context, he is part of the Malkajgiri constituency.

“The local, non-local factor doesn’t have any significance in the decision of the voters in Malkajgiri, because the majority of the voters themselves are non-locals. Even in the 2019 general elections, Revanth Reddy won the seat though he hails from Kodangal in Mahabubnagar district,” said political analyst Ramakrishna Sangem.

So, the constituency has thrown up a triangular contest in the Lok Sabha elections to be held on Monday and the fight is going to be tough, as each candidate has his or her own positive and negative points to win or lose the seat.

Congress candidate Sunitha is a seasoned politician, who had been the zilla parishad chairperson twice for Ranga Reddy and once for Vikarabad district. She is the wife of former minister Patnam Mahender Reddy, who has been in politics for over three decades.

Both husband and wife, who played a major role in the BRS till recently, defected to the Congress in March and within weeks, Sunitha was given the party ticket for Malkajgiri parliamentary seat.

According to Sangem, Sunitha has certain advantages over the other two candidates. She belongs to the ruling party and is banking on Revanth Reddy’s charisma. The chief minister, who represented Malkajgiri till recently, has taken it up as a prestige issue to win the seat and made conducted a whirlwind campaign in every nook and corner of the constituency.

“Malkajgiri constituency is dominated by the Reddys politically, if not numerically. In 2014, they supported businessman-turned-politician Chemakura Malla Reddy who won the Telugu Desam Party ticket and later defected to the BRS. In 2019, they stood by Revanth Reddy. Now that Revanth Reddy has become the chief minister, they are backing Sunitha, who is also a Reddy,” Sangem said.

Though BRS candidate Ragidi Laxma Reddy is also a Reddy, he is not an experienced leader like Sunitha and moreover, he is on the opposition side. In fact, Laxma Reddy had been in the Congress party as a small-time leader since 2009 and joined the BRS only recently. The BRS, who was struggling to find right candidates to fight the Lok Sabha elections, after its debacle in the assembly polls, forced Laxma Reddy to contest.

The advantage for Laxma Reddy is that all the seven MLAs falling under Malkajgiri parliamentary constituency are from the BRS. BRS working president and party president K Chandrashekar Rao’s son KT Rama Rao is focusing on the constituency to ensure that Laxma Reddy wins the seat.

“But it appears the BRS MLAs are not evincing much interest in campaigning for Laxma Reddy. A couple of them are even looking to switch over to the Congress after the Lok Sabha elections,” a senior BRS leader, who did not wish to be identified, said.

On the other hand, Rajender is confident that the Modi factor could be his trump card and help him win the seat with a comfortable margin. The constituency has a largely urban population. The northern part of the constituency has a huge population from the northern states of the country, while the southern and eastern parts comprise a large number of settlers from Andhra Pradesh.

There is a lot of craze for Modi among the north Indian voters of Malkajgiri and Rajender hopes they would rally behind him in large numbers. The Andhra settlers, too, have sympathy for Rajender, who was the only BRS leader who took on KCR and his family openly since 2021.

“I am not a new face in Malkajgiri, as I have been very popular for my role in the statehood agitation. As health minister, I have taken a proactive role in reaching out to people during the Covid-19 pandemic. So, I can understand the local issues much better than the other two candidates,” Rajender told reporters at a meet-the-press programme last week.

He is confident that the public meeting scheduled to be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Hyderabad on Friday will swing the mood in favour of the BJP in Malkajgiri.

Sangem, however, is sceptical. “You cannot take the urban voters for granted. The hype being created by the BJP might not convert into votes as such. The BJP has always been third in the elections from Malkajgiri, whether it was in the Lok Sabha elections or the assembly elections,” he said.