TRS Wins Huzurnagar By Record 43,233-Vote Margin

TRS candidate S Saidi Reddy won the by-election for the Huzurnagar Assembly seat by a record majority of 43,233 votes, breaking the earlier record of 29,194 votes of N Uttam Kumar Reddy in the 2018 election.

The BJP and the TDP lost their deposits (a candidate loses their deposit if they poll less than 1/6th of the number of votes of the winner). The BJP candidate K Rama Rao could secure only 2,621 votes, while the TDP candidate Chava Kiranmayi bagged only 1,827 votes, as opposed to the 1,12,796 votes for the TRS and the 69,563 votes for the Congress.

In fact, an independent candidate, Sapavath Suman, polled more votes than the BJP and the TDP candidates (he got 2,693 votes).

The results are a big debacle for the Congress which is trying hard to survive in Telangana, as also for its Telangana boss Uttam Kumar Reddy who held the seat previously (it was his resignation after being elected as Nalgonda MP in May that necessitated the by-election) and who had pulled strings to get the party ticket for his wife Padmavathi Reddy who had already lost the 2018 election for the Kodad seat.

The outcome is a pretty big embarrassment for the BJP, too - the party had been projecting itself as a credible alternative to the TRS after winning 4 Lok Sabha seats from Telangana in May, and saw even Union Minister of State Kishan Reddy campaigning for it. All the vituperative attacks against the TRS government and KCR failed to wean the people from the TRS away.

The BJP put on a brave face claiming that by-elections are usually won by the ruling party and that there was nothing major to be read into the results.

However, many sections opined that the results showed that the people were with KCR on the RTC employees' strike, and that the Congress leaders' bluff in that regard was called by the people, given its candidate could not get even 35% of the total votes polled. The Congress leaders, as also the BJP and the TDP leaders, had made several allegations against the Chief Minister claiming that he was hatching a conspiracy to grab the assets of RTC or to sell them his supporters and family members. The BJP also charged the TRS government and KCR with failure to implement some of the Central schemes in the State, though they were meant for welfare of the people, particularly the weaker sections. The Huzurnagar result shows that the people have not believed all these allegations against KCR and his government.

Commenting on the poll outcome, political analysts expressed the view that apart from the welfare schemes introduced by the TRS government, the Chief Minister inducting two women into his cabinet had also helped the party's prospects in Huzurnagar. There is a view that the induction of Satyavathi Rathod into the ministry, and the vigorous campaign she had undertaken in the constituency, had earned the votes of the women as well as the tribals. Along with other ministers and party leaders, Rathod had not only effectively countered the attacks launched by the Congress and other opposition parties during the electioneering, she also efficiently propagated the welfare schemes of the government. Some sections opined that had the Chief Minister included women in his cabinet much earlier, Uttam Kumar Reddy would not have won the Nalgonda Lok Sabha seat.