TRS Wins By Landslide in Telangana, TDP, BJP Decimated

In a remarkable endorsement of the TRS' welfare policies over the past four-and-a-half years and repudiation of Chandrababu Naidu's efforts to make inroads into the state, the people of Telangana gave a clear mandate to the TRS to form the government for a second consecutive term.

The TRS won 88 of the 119 Assembly seats, giving it an supermajority (2/3rds of the seats).

The much-touted Praja Kutami, an alliance of the Congress, the TDP, the TJS and the CPI, got just 21 seats, with the Congress winning 19 and the TDP winning two of them. Several Congress heavyweights including Revanth Reddy, Jana Reddy, Komatireddy Venkat Reddy, Ponnam Prabhakar, Ponnala Lakshmaiah, T Jeevan Reddy, J Geetha Reddy, S A Sampath Kumar, D K Aruna, G Chinna Reddy and Ch Vamshichand Reddy lost.

The BJP lost four seats from 2014 and managed to retain just Goshamahal, where local strongman Raja Singh asserted his dominance once again. Party stalwarts Dr K Laxman and G Kishan Reddy both lost.

The MIM managed to retain its seven seats, a couple (Nampally and Karwan) by just a whisker. The MIM was in a tacit alliance with the TRS.

While the TRS steamrolled over the opposition, it was not all hunky-dory for the pink party, however - it lost five seats held previously by four ministers (Jupally Krishna Rao, Thummala Nageswara Rao, P Mahender Reddy and Azmeera Chandulal) and ex-Speaker S Madhusudhan Chary.

Top TRS leaders however won by comfortable margins - KCR defeated his nearest rival by about 58,000 votes, KTR by about 89,000 votes and T Harish Rao by about 1,19,000 votes.

The overwhelming victory is being attributed significantly to Chandrababu Naidu being part of the opposition alliance, with KCR portraying the elections as a battle between him and Naidu, who he claimed was the de facto leader of the alliance, and who he said would ensure that the Andhras ruled Telangana again if the alliance won.

The mandate gives KCR a near-demigod status in the state, and is bound to accord him significant traction in national politics.