Telangana Election Results Explained: Part-2

The story of the 2023 assembly elections in Telangana is that the Congress won a slender majority only because the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) dented the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) in a number of seats.

But for that, the verdict would have been a hung legislature, with the Congress hard-pressed to form a government on its own.

The narrowness of the contest is clearly seen in the vote shares and swings.

For all their tumult and exultation, the Congress failed to poll more than 40 per cent of the popular vote, and much of what they got was from the ‘Others’ category.

At the same time, the BRS lost the majority of its vote to the BJP, largely in the north and west of the state, and still ended up just 2 percentage points behind the Congress.

This is the vote-share distribution for all three major players:

Note how the BJP has consolidated most of the gains it got during the 2019 general elections, around Hyderabad, and in the west and north of Telangana.

This is their cadre at work — faceless, tireless, dauntless, and relentless.

The BRS has been primarily reduced to central Telangana, plus the Hyderabad region, and a small pocket in the east. The Congress polled most heavily in the south and the east.

The gains and losses become more prominent when we look at a vote-swing map of the three principal parties.

The point to be noted here is that if the BRS managed to win as many seats as it did, despite strong negative vote swings, it is because it was successful in keeping its core vote base intact to a large extent.

But the majority of the Muslim vote has shifted to the Congress, except in Hyderabad, where Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM won its seven city seats once again.

In addition, the Congress has also done very well in reserved seats. As the table below shows, their vote-share leads in seats reserved for Scheduled Castes and Tribes outstripped the BRS by 10 per cent, with the BJP faring far more poorly than it did in general seats.

These are the areas where the remnant votes of the Bahujan Samaj Party, the Telugu Desam, and Y S Sharmila’s outfit were concentrated, and they appear to have moved comprehensively to the Congress.

This is a comedown for the BRS, from which it will find difficult to recover since it had won 16 of the 19 Scheduled Caste seats (a trend it maintained through the 2019 general elections).

Interestingly, the BRS polled more than the Congress in general seats, but the Congress won more because a portion of the BRS vote shifted to the BJP.

This means that the BRS’ coalition of Other Backward Castes and Forward Castes is still holding up in places, but it proved to be inadequate where other vote blocs like Muslims, Dalits, or tribals had a greater say.

But the true impact of the BJP on this election verdict becomes most visible when we compare the votes they polled to victory margins in individual seats. The BJP got more votes than the winning margin in 46 seats, of which the BRS won 26, the Congress 17, and the AIMIM three.

To the BRS’ infinite chagrin, they had won 39 of these 46 seats in 2018; yet, in 2023, they lost the bulk of their votes, mainly to the BJP, in both the seats they won or lost to the Congress.

And worst for the BRS is that this negative impact of the BJP’s growth in 2023 extended beyond the west and north of Telangana to Warangal city in the centre and the area around it.

The political ramifications are myriad. The BRS is on the backfoot and may be forced to enter into some sort of tacit understanding with the BJP if they are to do well in the 2024 general elections, especially since the Communist parties, who contested on their own, polled decently in multiple seats, even winning Kothagudem.

This would also take the heat off the BRS’ first family, who have been reeling from raids and arrests by central agencies for their alleged involvement in the Delhi liquor scam.

The Congress, having come back from the dead to win Telangana, may now be less inclined to compromise with other members of their dotted alliance in the run-up to the 2024 general elections.

And for the BJP in Telangana, it is an excellent opportunity to raise their tally in the Lok Sabha next year, from four seats to possibly eight.

(Read Part-1 here.)