KCR keeps winning streak intact despite unpopular decisions, graft charges

How does Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao manage to win election after election despite his government’s unpopular decisions and allegations of dictatorial style of functioning, corruption and family rule?

This question has again come to the fore after Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) wrested Huzurnagar Assembly seat from the Congress by a huge a margin on Thursday (October 24). It was the first bypoll in the state after the TRS returned to power after the December 2018 Assembly elections.

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Under normal circumstances, the outcome of a single Assembly by-election does not hold any significance, either for the ruling party or the opposition. However, Huzurnagar in Suryapet district is no ordinary constituency. It was won by the state Congress president N Uttam Kumar Reddy thrice in the past — in 2009, 2014 and 2018.

The victory in an otherwise Congress stronghold has given the TRS an aura of invincibility. The by-election was necessitated due to the resignation of Congress’s Uttam Kumar Reddy, who had won the seat by nearly 7,000 votes in the December 2018 Assembly elections. Subsequent to his election as Nalgonda MP he had resigned as an MLA and his wife Padmavathi was the Congress candidate this time from the Assembly seat.

Battle of perception

The massive victory margin of 43,000 votes for the TRS candidate S Saidi Reddy comes as an anti-climax to a sustained opposition campaign against the government for its inept handling of the agitation by the 48,000 odd employees of the Road Transport Corporation. Moreover, the Chief Minister has been under the opposition attack for his ‘dictatorial functioning’ and promoting family rule.

However, on the ground, the popularity of KCR and the appeal of his welfare schemes seem to be intact. The Congress, on the other hand, is widely seen as a divided house and its cadre a thoroughly demoralised lot.

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The charisma of KCR, seen as the architect of the Telangana statehood movement, still holds sway over Telangana voters while his brand of welfare politics, focusing on farmers and weaker sections, continues to reap electoral dividends for his party.

KCR draws his strength from the opposition’s weakness. In sharp contrast to the aggressive politics and strong messaging of the TRS, the opposition camp was in a state of disarray with no campaign strategy or alternative economic agenda.

With Thursday’s win, the strength of the TRS in the 119-member Assembly has gone up to 103, while Congress, with a tally of six, has lost the main opposition party status.

Surprisingly, the two-week long RTC strike has had no adverse impact on the voters as the constituency witnessed over 85% voter turnout.

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The Congress, which had suffered a steady desertion from its camp with 12 of its 19 MLAs defecting to the TRS since December last year, was hoping to find its winning ways this time around by tapping into the resentment of the agitating RTC employees. However, it has turned out that the issue did not find much traction on the ground.

Meanwhile, the BJP, which is keen to make inroads into the Telugu states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh as part of its “Look South” mission, has failed to make any impact in the by-election. Its candidate K Rama Rao even lost the deposit.

Similarly, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) candidate Ch Kiranmayi also lost the deposit.

Sweet revenge

For Saidi Reddy, it was sweet revenge in the electoral battlefield, having lost to Uttam Kumar Reddy in the 2018 Assembly elections from the constituency.

At that time, the TRS had contended that the Congress leader managed to scrape through with 7,000 vote majority because of the confusion created among the electorate by the truck symbol allocated to an independent candidate, which on an EVM closely resembled the car symbol of the ruling party.