A sweet win, but many bitter lessons

The costliest battle for Munugodu bypoll is over. The TRS has won with a majority of around 10,000 votes. Naturally, the pink party is on cloud nine as defeat here would have been a setback to its efforts to promote BRS as a national party. It has lost no time in launching tirade against the BJP saying that this election should be seen as a slap in the face of Modi and Amit Shah who had pumped hundreds of crores and sent political tourists to campaign; otherwise, the TRS would have got a much higher majority. TRS also claims it was a fight between development and self-respect and people voted for self-respect.

Being a political party, TRS had pulled its entire arsenal to win the election and succeeded. But then if one rewinds and analyses what all happened since Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy resigned from Congress and joined BJP, forcing a bypoll and the way the campaign took place, it can be said that the TRS government had forced the entire administration to go to the doorsteps of the voters. Ministers, MLAs, and Chief Minister visited the constituency, promised to adopt it and massive developmental activities were taken up. The pink party should understand that it is like riding a tiger. Now the ruling party cannot get down and continuing to ride it will prove to be a difficult task.

The most important aspect is that BJP which got only 10,000 votes in Munugode last time has now polled nearly 80,000 votes. Whatever the TRS leaders may say, this certainly is no small gain. TRS has every right to be jubilant over its victory but it cannot ignore the surge of BJP. It should not keep alleging that Delhi BJP leadership pumped in tons of money because no one is a holy cow and both parties vied with each other in lavish spend of money and distribution of liquor. The BJP cannot take full credit for getting 80,000 votes in Munugode. It was the candidate's image that helped them get so many votes. At the same time, the ruling party should understand (once the initial excitement of victory is over) that the results indicate that there is a strong anti-incumbency factor otherwise BJP wound not have polled so many votes despite Rajagopal Reddy being the candidate.

With just one year to go for general elections, the pink party should take this as a warning bell and should not gloss it over. As far as BJP is concerned, it should learn how difficult it could be to face the power of a state government when it comes to poll management and when the officially machinery must work under the control of the state government. The BJP leaders in Delhi must know this as they too must have used or misused the officially machinery in all BJP-ruled states. Another point that needs to be noted in this election is that it has brought transparency in one thing: Liberal use of money power. Both the ruling party and main rival BJP had set a new benchmark for elections which could prove to be dangerous for both. The UPI method of payment which was introduced by Modi government had come to the rescue of the political parties to transfer the money easily to the voters.

This result certainly has helped the TRS in getting short time gain but a year from now; it is going to pose a lot of trouble for the candidates of all parties. The dirty trend of buying votes at high cost so openly, spending about Rs 300 crore (as is being alleged) on distribution of liquor alone is a disturbing trend.

Opposition parties blame the administration that it had failed in controlling the money and liquor flow. Question is whether it failed to control or was there some other reason? The BJP should know this well since they are in power in many states. The pink and the saffron parties should learn to call a spade a spade. Neither of them has the right to destroy the democratic fabric of the country to win elections.