The intense and raucous campaigning of Telangana's political parties ahead of the upcoming by-election in Nagarjuna Sagar has finally come to an end today.
Each party vying for the seat had launched a blitzkrieg against its rivals, attacking their candidates for the smallest of slip-ups.
In its campaign, the TRS has consistently framed the election as a battle between the past - represented by the Congress' K Jana Reddy - and the future - represented by its own candidate Nomula Bhagat. The ruling party's leaders have repeatedly painted Jana Reddy as
a leader too old to function effectively as an MLA and Bhagat as a young and dynamic leader who wants the chance to carry forward the legacy of his father, former sitting MLA Nomula Narsimhaiah, and bring development to the constituency.
Several ministers, including Talasani Srinivas Yadav, Mohammed Mahmood Ali, G Jagadish Reddy and Srinivas Goud, and other high-profile leaders of the pink party have spent the past few weeks
mobilising support for Bhagat. They have cited the Congress candidate's advanced age and his alleged failure to develop Nagarjuna Sagar in his four-decade-long political career as factors that make him an unsuitable choice for the post.
The very fact that the TRS has chosen to field Bhagat may well work in the party's favour as many feel that the voters of the constituency will sympathise with the leader who
recently lost his father.
In the face of the unceasing attacks against Jana Reddy, the Congress too has been busy not only defending its candidate but also alleging that the fact that the TRS government has not bothered to fulfil many of its promises, including its assurance that it would fill all the vacant government job posts in Telangana, proves it to be a government not as committed to development and progress as it claims to be.
The Congress has also attempted to debunk the ruling party's allegations that septuagenarian Jana Reddy has not done anything to develop Nagarjuna Sagar, and has claimed that several of the roads in the constituency were laid by their candidate.
Though many believe that the Congress is a sinking ship, the party's leaders seem confident that the "contest between
an honest and upright public servant known for having devoted 40 years of his life to the public and a Chief Minister who is seen as corrupt and compromised" will easily be won by the former.
Some Congress leaders have alleged that the TRS is so threatened by their candidate that it has had to resort to distributing cash and liquor to the voters of Nagarjuna Sagar to secure their support, an allegation echoed by the BJP as well (Telangana in-charge of the party Tarun Chugh had recently slammed the TRS for allegedly
"polluting the purity" of the constituency with its campaign tactics.)
It has to be said that Jana Reddy does have a serious shot at winning the seat. He is a formidable opponent who had won seven Assembly elections, and had, for the first time, lost to Nomula Narsimhaiah in 2018.
The ruling party and its supremo, Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, seem all too aware of the threat the veteran Congress leader poses to their attempts to retain the seat. In fact, the CM, who usually keeps away from by-election campaigns, even decided to address a
massive rally in Halia on April 14 in an effort to highlight the attributes of his party and its candidate.
At the meeting, KCR was seen promising the tribals of the region, a sizeable section of the population, that he would personally oversee the resolution of the podu land problems across the state by setting up Praja Darbars. He also said that the process would first be carried out in Nalgonda.
He then promised to set up educational institutions in Halia and Nandikonda and to complete the irrigation projects in the district within one-and-a-half years once Bhagat was elected.
Another key contestant for the seat, the BJP, who has fielded ST leader Panugothu Ravi Kumar Naik from the seat, however, has been telling voters not to get misled by the "false promises" of the CM and his party, and have urged them to think about the future of their constituency.
Leaders like Union Minister of State for Home Affairs G Kishan Reddy and actor-turned-politician Vijayashanti have been working hard to mobilise support for Naik, and have continually alleged that the ruling party has been committing electoral malpractices in order to secure votes.
In fact, after its rather
poor performance in the recent MLC elections, the saffron party has been quite invested in the campaign for the upcoming by-election, and had even enlisted a troop of powerful campaigners to help it clinch the seat. The 30-member team of star campaigners reportedly included state party chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar, national Vice-President D K Aruna, MoS Kishan Reddy, and firebrand MLAs Raja Singh and M Raghunandan Rao.
With both the BJP and the Congress claiming that the "misrule" of the KCR government has inspired widespread feelings of anti-incumbency, one wonders whether the TRS' attempts to retain the seat will work. The party will have to defeat not only the candidates of the BJP and the Congress but also 38 other hopefuls contesting for the seat.