TRS wins high-stake T’gana bypoll as BJP gains ground

The ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) on Sunday won the high-stakes bypoll to the Munugode assembly seat in Nalgonda district, even as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) gained ground by emerging as the alternative to the chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s party ahead of the crucial assembly elections in the southern state.

TRS candidate Kusukuntla Prabhakar Reddy wrested the seat from former Congress legislator Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy, who contested the November 3 by-election on a BJP ticket, by a margin of 10,309 votes. While Prabhakar Reddy secured 97,006 votes, accounting for 42.95% of the total 225,192 votes polled, Rajagopal Reddy ended up with 86,697 votes (or 38.38%), the Election Commission said at the end of 15th and final round of counting on Sunday.

Congress’s Palwai Sravanthi, daughter of former minister late Palwai Goverdhan Reddy, who had represented Munugode constituency for five times, could secure only 23,906 votes (or 10.6%) and lost her deposit, as did the other 44 candidates.

The bypoll to the seat was necessitated after Rajagopal Reddy — who had won the seat on a Congress ticket in the December 2018 assembly elections — resigned from the assembly after defecting to the BJP in August this year.

Though the BJP lost the contest, it made a considerable gain since the last assembly elections. In 2018, BJP’s Gangidi Manohar Reddy had received only 12,725 votes amounting to a meagre 8% of total votes polled, but on Sunday the party’s vote count jumped almost seven-fold to 86,515.

“In a way, it is a big gain for the BJP in Munugode, given the fact that the party has a very little presence in Nalgonda district, dominated by the Congress and the Communists in the past and the TRS at present,” said political analyst Rama Krishna Sangem. “However, this big jump in the BJP vote share can be attributed to Rajagopal Reddy’s personal image and popularity.”

The analyst further said that the bypoll outcome has projected the BJP as the only alternative to the TRS in the next assembly elections due later next year, as the Congress has been relegated to the third position.

In the 2018 assembly elections, Rajagopal Reddy had secured 99,239 votes (or 50.51%), defeating Prabhakar Reddy of the TRS by 37,552 votes. After the bypoll, which saw over 93% polling on November 3, the TRS improved its tally in the 119-member assembly to104, while the BJP has three members. The Congress saw its tally go down from six to five.

Conceding defeat, Rajagopal Reddy said he would accept the people’s verdict. “But I have achieved the moral victory, as it was because of sheer money power and misuse of official machinery that the TRS could win the bypoll,” he told reporters in Munugode.

The BJP candidate further alleged that the TRS had splurged money and distributed liquor among the voters. “The entire official machinery favoured the ruling party candidate. The entire cabinet, MLAs and TRS leaders descended over Munugode to take on the BJP,” he said. “The people were left with no choice but to vote for the TRS candidate.”

Rejecting the allegations, TRS working president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s son KT Rama Rao accused the BJP candidate of “making every effort to lure the voters with his money power, which resulted in a smaller victory margin (for the TRS)”.

Rao further said the voters have taught a fitting lesson to the BJP, which forced the by-election on the people of Munugode in order to prove that it was a “big political force in Telangana”.

“Several BJP leaders were caught by the police with money bags. Crores of rupees were transferred into the accounts of Munugode leaders from Sushi Infra, belonging to Rajagopal Reddy’s family,” Rao alleged. “The BJP central leadership brought in central paramilitary forces and even Income Tax department people in Munugode to trouble the TRS.”