Munugode by-poll holds blueprint for future of Telangana politics

The KCR-led Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) managed to trounce the BJP in the by-election held for the Munugode Assembly constituency of Telangana, after running a high-pitched campaign that probably cannot be replicated in any election.

It was a nerve-racking contest, as the entire TRS government, consisting of Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, all his cabinet ministers, and as many as 90 MLAs (the latter occupied every village in the constituency), conducted a high-decibel campaign for the party candidate Kusukuntal Prabhakar Reddy. Finally, Prabhakar Reddy won 97,006 votes  securing a comfortable win with a margin of 10,309 votes over his BJP rival Komati Rajagopala Reddy who bagged 86,697 votes.

Like the high-pitched election campaign, the counting also was not without drama. The TRS candidate, who started his account with a lead of 1,292 votes in the first round, showed signs of losing ground to the BJP in the next few rounds giving an impression that it would be difficult for the ruling party to defeat Rajagopal Reddy.

At one point, the margin dropped to 415, making the TRS extremely jittery. The party had to wait till the seventh round for the votes to steadily swing in its favour. TRS workers started bursting crackers when the lead crossed 2,000. Till the 11th round, it was still below 5,000. And, it picked up only after that round pushing the margin up to 10,000 in the end.

BJP vs TRS in Telangana

In the final analysis, the BJP stood second and the Congress nominee, Palvai Sravanthi, who remained a poor third, managed to  muster up 23,864 votes. The most disappointing performance was that of the BSP. The BSP campaign headed by IPS officer turned politician Dr RS Praveen Kumar, failed to create any impact in an atmosphere where money and liquor alone mattered.

Also read: RSS ‘brokers’ sought to buy four TRS MLAs, with Modi’s blessings: KCR

Curiously, the outcome of the Munugode bypoll is being interpreted as a victory by the winner and the loser. The TRS working president and state IT and municipal minister KT Ramarao, of course, was quick to declare that TRS candidate Prabhakar Reddy’s victory was the triumph of self-respect of the Munugode people.

“The BJP played all the tricks of the trade from violating the election code to distributing crores of rupees and misusing constitutional bodies to win the election. But the people chose to remain with the TRS,” said Ramarao.

On the other hand, the BJP, which was disappointed that it could not repeat Huzurabad in Munugode, said the by-election had proved BJP was the real alternative to the TRS. The BJP drove home the point that the ruling party must come to terms with the fact that the 2023 Assembly election could very well be a straight contest between the BJP and TRS.

“The election showed where the BJP stands in Telangana. Our candidate Rajagopal Reddy secured as many as 86,000 votes (39 per cent), which is not a mean achievement. The voting pattern in Munugode shows BJP’s growing popularity in Telangana,” gloated state BJP chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar.

Irrespective of the claims and counterclaims, the uncomfortable takeaway for the TRS, which is projecting the by-election as the peoples’ endorsement of the party’s new avatar Bharat Rashtra Samiti, is that the TRS is no longer in a comfort zone created by the decade-long Telangana movement that it had spearheaded.

Also read: Assembly bypolls: TRS wins Munugode while BJP bags 4 seats; RJD, Uddhav Sena 1 each

The way ministers, MLAs, and party leaders campaigned in the villages for over a month and poached leaders of other parties indicates that the cash-transfer-driven populism and CM KCR’s style of governance have reached a point of saturation after eight years. The party was forced to devise other questionable methods to reach out to the voters.

The critical Left support

Another important fact the TRS cannot ignore now is that the 10,000-vote-margins were made possible only after it embraced the Left parties for help in the constituency. Interestingly, after the creation of Telangana in 2014, it was KCR who started ridiculing the Left parties as redundant.

After this election, KCR, however, seems to have realised that he cannot afford to ignore the Left vote if the looming BJP threat has to be thwarted. Nalgonda, especially the Munugode constituency, has been the bastion of the Left parties for decades. Though the communists have not been able to win the election in the new T-State, they do have enough votes to influence the outcome in Munugode and this was established once again.

“The CPI won the Munugode seat five times in 1985, 1989, 1994, 2004 and 2009. The chain was broken only in 2014 when CPI lost the election. It happened because the CPM chose to field its own candidate. And, Palvai Sravanti also entered the fray as a Congress rebel. In 2018, we supported Congress nominee Rajagopal Reddy as part of the Congress-TDP-CPI-TJS alliance,” said CPI secretary K Sambasivarao. Both CPI and CPM claimed that but for their support the TRS could not have won a comfortable majority in Munugode.

The role of Congress in future

According to Prof E Venkateshu, a noted political scientist from the University of Hyderabad, the Munugode by-election is a pointer to the emerging political scenario in the country.

Prof Venkateshu, who is also the Telangana convenor of Lok Niti, pointed out that the role played by the Congress votes in defeating the BJP cannot be ignored in Munugode.

Also read: Telangana Munugode bypoll: As parties open money tap, voters seek ‘cut’

“In my view, it was the Congress, not the TRS, that defeated the BJP in the Munugode by-election. The Congress has retained its vote bank. The party has polled as many as 23,906 votes. In a constituency of 2.3 lakh voters, 24,000 votes (10 per cent) is a significant share. The fact that the total votes polled by Congress and BJP are much more than the votes polled by TRS in the company of Left parties plays a crucial role in the future electoral strategies of anti-BJP parties,” opined Prof Venkateshu.

Prof Venkateshu is foreseeing a future where the Congress can play the role of a coordinator in forging a strong and viable anti-BJP front at the Centre, with its original vote bank intact. Parties like the TRS, if they seriously want to checkmate the BJP, need to change their attitude towards the Congress, he said.

“If the Congress retains its vote base in the different states as happened in Munugode, it would become difficult for BJP to replace the regional parties. So, Congress is expected to play the role of a cementing force for a coalition of regional parties against the BJP.  In the next phase, the BJP will try to replace the regional parties like TRS in the states. TRS is bound to face a formidable challenge from the BJP in the future and it cannot afford to give short shrift to allying with all non-BJP forces including the Congress,” he said.