Congress sees silver lining in PACS polls results

Hyderabad: Though the party's supported candidates did not win more number of PACS which were gone to the poll recently, the Congress is satisfied with the outcome.

Party leaders said that though party's candidates won just 54 PACS out of the 900, the resilience being shown by the party cadre against the pressures of the ruling party leaders has proved that the organisation is quite strong at the grassroot level.

Apart from this, the favorable results in old Medak, Warangal, Nalgonda and Mahbubnagar districts, which have been considered as strongholds of the party, have been showing revival.

The Congress lost Assembly, Parliament, RLB and ULB elections in these districts in the past two years. But in the PACS polls these districts have shown a tilt towards the Grand Old Party.

Party's senior leader and national vice chairman of Congress Kisan Cell M Kodanda Reddy told The Hans India that if organisational support was extended the party supporters could have won 50 more Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies(PACS).

Kodanda Reddy said that the cooperative elections which have been held on non party line have seen abuse of power and use of money power by the ruling TRS on a large scale. He said that never like in the past the ruling party had distributed money in the PACS polls. If the elections have been held in free and fair manner, Congress candidates could have done well.

Though the TRS government has been implementing Rythu Bandhu scheme and few other schemes for farmers, they have more or less favoured Congress in four districts. He said that it was a good sign to the party.

The Congress have been losing continuously to TRS since 2014 general elections. It received shocking results in all the ordinary elections to Assembly, Parliament, rural and urban local body elections.

However, the Congress cadre has put up a good fight in the cooperative elections. At several places fights have taken place between TRS and Congress workers. Though these elections should have been held on non political party basis the ruling party has pressed the Ministers, MLAs and other public representatives into the service.

At several places the ruling party mounted pressure to postpone the elections with fear of losing them. In various PACS the Congress- supported candidates lost with just three to four votes.

Most of the farmers who are supporters of Congress were given up to Rs 60,000 to vote in favour of the ruling party candidates. This damaged the prospects of Congress supported candidates.