Congress Records Impressive Win In Telangana As Arrogant BRS Falters
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2023-12-05 14:34:34
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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
The Congress victory in Telangana is a result of three things - public disenchantment with the BRS and KCR, the Congress promises of doles as per the Karnataka model and the tireless planning and execution by state Congress chief Revanth Reddy. For once, the party high command has done the right thing by ignoring the objections of some senior leaders and rewarding Reddy for delivering the state by appointing him the chief minister. His swearing-in is to take place on December 7.
That the people of Telangana were yearning for a change of government was visible to all except the Rao family and its hangers-on. A corrupt and increasingly arrogant administration was facing huge anti-incumbency but with three-way fights in most seats, it was banking on the fact that a division of opposition votes would work in its favour. That was not to be so as although the BJP gained substantially in both vote share (which rose by 6.9%) and seats compared to 2018, it seemed that the opposition in Telangana was the BRS and the BJP and the division of votes helped the Congress, which gained handsomely despite just 2% vote share advantage over the BRS.
The Congress performed splendidly. Its vote share rose by 11% and it won 64 seats. It had won only 21 seats in 2018. The results show that it managed to convice Muslim voters to shift their allegiance to the party. In Telangana, the BJP helped the Congress by cutting into a part of the anti-incumbency votes of the BRS and allowing the Congress to win more seats than its vote share warranted. Although it has a slim majority in the 119 seat house, the Reddy administration is likely to complete its term without any hiccups.
Overconfidence was the undoing of the BRS and KCR. After displaying national ambitions by renaming his Telangana Rashtra Samiti as Bharat Rashtra Samiti and ignoring corruption charges against party leaders, KCR made a major mistake in giving tickets to almost all sitting MLAs who faced angry voters over broken promises and corruption charges. After the heady days of statehood and consecutive victories for two terms, KCR will now have to sit in the opposition and analyze what went wrong.
