Hyderabad: Telangana Congress chief and Malkajgiri MP Revanth Reddy won the Kodangal assembly seat by over 32,500 but lost Kamareddy — the second seat he contested — to Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Katipally Venkata Rama Reddy.
Revanth Reddy won Kodangal — his home constituency that he lost in 2018 — by 32,532 votes. While he secured 1,07,429 votes, his closest rival, Bharat Rashtra Samithi’s (BRS) Patnam Narendar Reddy, got 74,897 votes.
In Kamareddy, he came a third, after BJP’s winning candidate Katipally Venkata Rama Reddy and Chief Minister and BRS chief K. Chandrashekar Rao. The BJP candidate beat the CM by a margin of 6,741 votes, securing 66,652 against the latter’s 74,897.
With the Congress having won 46 seats and leading in 18 others, Revanth, 54, is seen as a frontrunner for the CM.
The Malkajgiri Lok Sabha MP had joined the Congress party in 2017 and became the Telangana unit chief in 2021. He was a Telugu Desam Party (TDP) legislator earlier.
In a party seen as embroiled in feuds and faction wars, Revanth, Congress leaders say, was given some latitude in order to lead the party to victory in the polls.
“I am going to win in both Kamareddy and Kodangal,” Revanth told reporters Thursday, while asking the cadres to begin celebrations “as the Congress will form the new government in the state on 9 December”.
“The high command would decide who will become the CM,” Revanth said Friday, predicting 80 seats for Congress, and adding that “KCR and [his son] KTR will pack their bags to shift to a farmhouse and the US, respectively”.
Kamareddy, with a total 2,45,982 registered voters, recorded a voting percentage of 75.6 percent Thursday. It falls under the Zaheerabad Lok Sabha constituency.
While KCR choosing to contest in Kamareddy in addition to Gajwel came as a surprise, the Congress, too, in a last-minute move, fielded Revanth here to take the CM on, in addition to Kodangal.
In his poll speeches, Revanth accused KCR of coming to Kamareddy to grab lands, “since there are no lands left in Gajwel for the KCR family to encroach on”.
A major issue in the constituency has been the Kamareddy master plan, devised by the BRS government for the expansion and development of the district headquarters. The plan includes eight villages in the town’s vicinity, a prospect opposed by locals.
Revanth has accused KCR of designing the plan to snatch fertile lands of farmers in the name of development.
Kodangal, with a total registered 2,30,415 voters, recorded a voting percentage of 82 percent Thursday. This is the seat Revanth won twice (2004 & 2009) as a TDP candidate but lost to the BRS in 2018 as the Congress candidate. Here, Revanth is up against Narender Reddy of the BRS and Bantu Ramesh of the BJP.
At a BRS rally in Kodangal, KCR had termed Revanth “a big thief and land-grabber” and predicted his defeat. “He can anyway not become the CM as the Congress cannot win more than 20 seats in the assembly,” KCR said.
(Edited by Tony Rai)