Bipolar battle takes away edge of Congress, BJP

Hyderabad: The bipolar contest between the ruling Congress and BJP got mixed results in Telangana. While both the national parties shared eight seats each, the AIMIM improved its vote share and retained the Hyderabad Lok Sabha seat.

The Congress and BJP were expecting to win 10 to 12 MP seats by preparing their own strategies and groundwork in a majority of Lok Sabha segments. The Congress with its welfare agenda made attempts to woo all sections of the voters.

The BJP relied primarily on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s charishma, development and nationalism ideology. The BRS raised Telangana issues and its commitment to safeguard the state interests by projecting the BJP and Congress as nonlocal parties.

Surprisingly, the Congress and BRS lost the elections in Mahbubnagar and Medak Lok Sabha seats from where Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy and BRS supremo K Chandrashekhar Rao hailed, respectively. The BRS was pushed to the third position in Medak, while Congress candidate Vamshidhar Reddy lost to BJP candidate DK Aruna in Mahbubnagar.

The Congress has won Khammam, Nalgonda and Bhongir MP seats with a thumping majority against the BRS candidates. The ruling party also registered a good performance in another five LS segments – Nagarkurnool, Mahabubabad, Zaheerabad, Peddapalli and Warangal.

Congress leaders said Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘charisma’ played a spoilsport for the Congress in some seats. As a result, the party had lost some MP seats where the party leadership strove hard to win them. Revanth Reddy took the responsibility of Mahbubnagar and Malkajgiri segments and prepared strategies to defeat the BJP. However, the Congress lost to the saffron party. The Congress tried its best to defeat BJP sitting MPs D Arvind (Nizamabad) and B Sanjay (Karimnagar) by fielding strong candidates but proved a futile exercise.

Revanth made an experiment by fielding a government  increased its tally from 4 to 8 MPs, showed the best performance in Malkajgiri, Medak and Chevella segments. BJP candidates E Rajendar, K Vishveshwara Reddy and Raghunandan Rao won the seats with a good majority. Rajendar secured more than 2 lakh majority by defeating the Congress candidate Sunitha Mahendar Reddy. BJP candidate K Vishweshwar Reddy defeated the Congress candidate Ranjeet Reddy, who was elected BRS MP in the previous term. BJP leader Raghunandan Rao showed his domination on the Medak Lok Sabha segment by defeating the Congress.

Analysts said the BJP succeeded in transforming the BRS vote bank in favour of the party candidates in many segments. The BRS was strong enough in Malkajgiri by winning all seven MLA seats in the recently-held Assembly elections. But the Telangana party failed to repeat the winning streak in the segment.