The Telangana Story Thus Far

As per trends till noon, Telangana has some surprises in its key constituencies this Lok Sabha election.

After a landslide victory in the assembly elections of 2018, TRS is leading in only 9 out of 17 seats; BJP leads in 4, Congress in 3 and AIMIM in 1. The rise of the BJP in the state, which had only 1 seat in the 2014 elections, is being seen as the more astounding factor.

At the time of writing, K Kavitha of the TRS, daughter of K Chandrasekhar Rao, is trailing behind the BJP candidate D Aravind in Nizamabad by around 31,000 votes. It will be remembered that when Kavitha came to cast her vote on April 11, she had been gheraoed by women farmers for not fulfilling her promises made in 2014.

BJP candidate G. Kishan Reddy is leading by over 38,000 votes in Secunderabad constituency, where other candidates are Anjan Kumar of Congress, and T. Sai Kiran Yadav of TRS. Observers had been tentative about this constituency for two reasons: BJP was fielding a fresh face, compared to Bandaru Dattatreya who had won comfortably in the 2014 election, defeating INC candidate M Anjan Kumar Yadav with a margin of 2,54,735 votes.

Two, given TRS’ well-oiled and extensive machinery that relies on influencing people through freebies and direct money doles, it was quite possible the verdict had been swung in TRS’ favor. T. Sai Kiran Yadav, the son of Telangana Minister T. Srinivas Yadav, was reportedly counting on the TRS wave in the state to take him ahead.

However, supporters of BJP had maintained from the beginning that Kishan Reddy “had a very good chance” because of a pro-Modi sentiment.

Adilabad and Karimnagar are the other constituencies where BJP candidates are leading with close to 55,000 votes and 80,000 votes respectively.

Asaduddin Owaisi of the AIMIM is leading in the Hyderabad constituency, as expected.