Why the TRS has little to celebrate despite winning in Munugode

The tough fight it put up and the eclipse suffered by the Congress have reinforced the BJP narrative that only it can challenge the TRS.

ByRaj Rayasam

Published Nov 06, 2022 | 7:12 PMUpdatedNov 06, 2022 | 7:52 PM

TRS workers celebrating their party's Munugode win at Telangana Bhavan in Hyderabad on Sunday, 6 November (South First).

The ruling TRS in Telangana has won the Munugode by-election by a margin of more than 10,000 votes over its nearest rival, the BJP.

Though it has pipped the saffron party, it is not celebration time for the TRS.

Instead, it should be worried that despite being an underdog with virtually no presence in Munugode, the BJP put up a stiff challenge to a behemoth like the TRS. And more so as it is at the cusp of transforming itself into BRS (Bharat Rashtra Samiti), to steam-roll its way to Delhi and take Prime Minister Narendra Modi head-on.

It has to do quite a bit of soul-searching and see if the allegations that the BJP had made against it — that it is a family-run party — had found traction among the voters. And whether the saffron party’s majoritarian, exclusivist agenda was appealing to people.

Another key takeaway from the by-election outcome is that K Chandrasekhar Rao seems to be losing the charm that he used to switch on whenever necessary to rally people behind him.

Many positives for BJP

For the BJP, on the other hand, there are many positives even in defeat.

Polling over 80,000 votes apart, the Munugode contest has reinforced the saffron party’s narrative that it not the Congress, but the BJP that will lead the charge against the ruling TRS in the coming Assembly election, due towards the end of 2023.

Of course, the BJP has little presence on the ground in large swathes of the state. But the party has no dearth of resources either, and is adept at projecting an aura of power. One can expect a strident, high-level and non-stop targeting of the TRS in the coming months, using all kinds of media to unsettle the ruling party.

The party will no doubt spend lavishly as well in the months ahead as it seeks to capitalise on its Munugode performance and convince anti-TRS forces that it is the real challenger to the ruling party.

The tone has already been set with its candidate Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy, while conceding defeat, claiming “moral victory” and terming the outcome a victory of “adharma” over “dharma”.

Senior legislator Eatala Rajender said much the same.

“KCR’s arrogance is suffering the worst-ever defeat in this by-election. BJP, which absolutely has no presence in Munugode, is coming equal with TRS. Even if we are trailing by a few hundred votes, it is a victory for us,” he said.

Anxious moments

Ever since the counting of votes began in the morning to 2 pm, the TRS survived anxious moments as Rajagopal Reddy proved to be stronger than the pink party had thought.

Munugode

Congress Candidate P Sravanthi, TRS candidate Koosukuntla Prabhakar Reddy and BJP candidate Komtireddy Rajagopal Reddy. (Supplied)

Till then, the race was more or less equal, reminding one of Dubbak by-election in November 2020 when BJP candidate M Raghunandan Rao’s fortunes were in doubt till the last vote was counted.

It was as thrilling as India’s recent T20 World Cup 2022 match against Pakistan.

According to independent analysts, the TRS could not have won the seat had it not taken the support of the communist parties, which it had ignored for the last eight years.

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The Left support

The two communist parties, mainly the CPI, has about 20,000 committed voters in the constituency who pledged their support to the TRS, which helped it to force its way through the choppy waters.

K Prabhakar Reddy, the TRS candidate. (Koosukuntla_TRS/Twitter)

“We supported the TRS because our main aim was to prevent the BJP from winning the seat since the right-wing party is a threat to the secular fabric of India,” CPI leader Palla Venkat Reddy said.

The help of the communists has been invaluable as it came at a time when the TRS is carrying tonnes of anti-incumbency load on its shoulders. The help came in handy or it would have found it difficult to face the BJP which has been bearing down on it mercilessly.

The TRS could restrain BJP to a large extent in Choutuppal and Chandur municipal towns where the latter had pinned high hopes by default, assuming that urban voters would prefer the saffron party.

The TRS managed to do this with the help of the CPI and CPM. Had these two parties contested independently, there would have been a big drain in the pro-TRS votes.

Congress disappoints TRS

Also, the TRS seemed to have banked heavily on the probability that the Congress nominee Palvai Sranvathi would retain a major chunk of that party’s votes. If she had done as the TRS had expected, there would have been a major cut in BJP nominee Komatireddy Rajgopal Reddy’s votes.

Such a scenario would have indirectly helped the TRS. A TRS leader, when initial rounds were being declared, rued that Sravanthi should have done better and expressed unhappiness over the Congress’s poor performance.

KCR Munugode rally

File photo of KCR addressing a rally in Munugode. (Supplied)

TRS detractors claimed that KCR’s magic had worn out and the people of Munugode were very disillusioned with his rule. Though the party was in power for the last eight years, Munugode remained a dirty constituency with no development.

Though Munugode had been electing Opposition party candidates to the Assembly, they argued that it is the responsibility of the state to look after all constituencies equally.

They referred to KCR’s recent announcement at a public meeting that he would soon attend to their long-pending demands for a 100-bed hospital in Chandur and a revenue division with Chandur as its headquarters.

He termed them very small issues, but the question that remains unanswered is: If they were very small, how come he did not address them earlier?

On the Dindi project, he blamed the Centre for not deciding the state’s share of Krishna waters, which did not seem to have cut any ice with the voters. As Dindi Project from which Charlagudem Project draws water remains incomplete, farmers have been going through an ordeal.

Local TRS leaders uninspiring

The Achilles heel of the TRS is that its MLAs and ministers have stopped inspiring people back in their constituencies and KCR alone has to bear the entire burden of the party on his shoulders.

The district-level politics of one-upmanship by leaders has worked against the TRS. For instance, in Nalgonda district, it is said that Energy Minister G Jagadish Reddy does not get along with the Backwards Class (BC) leaders, who constituted a large chunk of the Munugode population.

Most ministers deployed in Munugode could not buoy up the spirit of the party beyond a certain level, which led to the party not getting as many votes as expected. The ministers are accused of spending huge amounts of money to prove to their master that they did well in campaigning so that they would not be sidelined at the time of the next elections.

For the BJP, though ceding defeat is a little painful, it should celebrate the loss as it has risen to match TRS in a constituency where it does not have any presence.

Though BJP nominee Rajagopal Reddy is a man with unlimited resources, the fact remains that he won the 2018 elections mainly due to the Congress’s backing.

The legacy of Palvai

Palvai Govardhan Reddy, whose daughter Sravanthi was in the fray in the by-election, won the seat five times which shows how much respect the voters had for him.

The legacy of Govardhan Reddy seems to have transferred to Rajagopal Reddy when he contested on a Congress ticket in 2018. But when he joined the BJP, the vote did not transfer lock, stock and barrel as he had assumed.

Palvai Sravanthi

Palvai Sravanthi, the Congress candidate. (Preetham_inc/twitter)

Palvai’s daughter retained more than 22,000 votes of the almost one lakh votes the Congress bagged in 2018, which itself is no mean achievement considering the fact she neither had any resources nor did she represent a party whose stock is on the rise.

Analysts say that if Rajgopal Reddy had come very close to defeating the TRS nominee, it was also because he got support from an unexpected quarter no one had paid much attention.

Though the TDP died a natural death in Telangana after the bifurcation of the state in 2014, it is believed that it has some presence even now in Munugode as it is part of south Telangana and due to being geographically a little closer to Andhra Pradesh.

The TDP which wanted to test the waters in Munugode toyed with the idea of fielding a BC candidate, but since no BC had been fielded by any mainstream party, it decided against it, after Rajagopal Reddy requested the TDP leadership not to split the anti-government vote.