BJP, Congress Win Seven LS Seats, Shatter TRS Dreams

The Congress and the BJP in Telangana made their presence felt in the 2019 general elections, the results of which started coming out today.

The BJP bagged four Lok Sabha seats and the Congress managed three in the State, resulting in the ruling party's dreams of bagging 16 of the 17 seats (it left Hyderabad for its ally the MIM) being shattered.

While the Congress won the Nalgonda, Bhongir and Malkajgiri Lok Sabha seats, the BJP won Karimnagar, Secunderabad, Adilabad and Nizamabad.

What has shocked the ruling TRS the most is the fact that K Kavitha, the sitting MP of Nizamabad and daughter of Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, lost the election. The BJP's Dharmapuri Arvind, whose brother Sanjay faced allegations of sexual harassment against him by students of a college that the family owns, won the seat this time.

The defeat of Kavitha is proving hard to digest for the ruling party leaders, given KCR himself threw his weight behind her.

The BJP managed to retain the Secunderabad seat with its senior leader G Kishan Reddy winning the seat by defeating his TRS rival. First time contestant for a Lok Sabha seat Bandi Sanjay Kumar won Karimnagar, and Soyam Babu Rao won Adilabad by defeating their TRS rivals.

Political analysts feel that the four Lok Sabha seats from where the BJP won the elections could have been pocketed by the Congress. Although former MPs Ponnam Prabhakar and Madhu Yashki Goud contested for the Karimnagar and Nizamabad MP seats, they lost the elections possibly due to a perception that Congress candidates defect to the TRS after winning.

The Congress victors include TPCC president N Uttam Kumar Reddy who won the Nalgonda LS seat, former minister Komatireddy Venkat Reddy who won Bhongir (by a slender majority of 5,000 votes), and A Revanth Reddy who won the Malkajgiri LS seat (the most populous in the country).