Five months after it swept the Assembly elections, Telangana Rashtra Samithi suffered reverses in the Lok Sabha elections managing to win only 9 seats, losing out to both BJP and Congress and dashing the hopes of its chief K Chandrasekhar Rao of forming a Federal Front though the party indicated that Congress colluded with BJP to foil its mission of winning 16 seats.
As BJP made inroads into Telangana increasing its tally to four from one for chief minister K Chandrasekhar it hit close to home since his daughter K Kavitha Rao suffered a humiliating defeat in the hands of BJP’s Arvind Dharmapuri by over 68,000 votes in Nizamabad while another senior party leader B Vinod Kumar lost to BJP’s Bandi Sanjay Kumar as well from Karimnagar.
In fact adding insult to injury for the TRS a number of candidates of BJP and Congress who emerged victorious this time had lost in the Assembly elections held in December including G Kishen Reddy of BJP and firebrand Congress leader A Revanth Reddy.
TRS working president KT Rama Rao was not too forthcoming on the defeat of his sister from Nizamabad but indicated that BJP and Congress had ganged up to beat them in the polls.
“These things do happen in politics. Lot of stalwarts get defeated. It seems that Congress has colluded with BJP and there are other factors as well,” he said adding that none of the 178 farmers who had contested against her were actually farmers but belonged to Congress and BJP.
The other seats picked up by BJP was Adilabad while the party retained Secunderabad seat with G Kishen Reddy winning it by 51,333 votes.
Asaduddin Owaisi of AIMIM retained his Hyderabad seat for the fourth time winning by a margin of 2.72 lakh votes. With AIMIM winning Aurangabad in Maharashtra AIMIM will have 2 MPs in the Parliament this time.
Mr Owaisi ruled out complaints about EVM and said: “No rigging of EVM it is the Hindu mind that has undergone rigging. Nowhere in the world people are afraid of the minority.” The drubbing TRS received will rankle more with Congress winning 3 seats this time.
With TRS going for Mission 16 leaving only Hyderabad seat for Mr Owaisi, and none of the central leadership coming to the state for campaigning the local leaders and candidates of Congress were left to fend for themselves.
However, PCC chief N Uttam Kumar Reddy assuaged the humiliating defeat of Congress in Assembly elections and subsequent poaching its MLAs by TRS by winning the Nalgonda Lok Sabha seat.
Moreover, its firebrand leader A Revanth Reddy who suffered a shocking defeat from Kodangal won from Malkajgiri with a slim margin.
Party leader Komati Reddy Venkata Reddy won from Bhongir while Congress lost the Chevalla seat after giving a good fight.