BJP dents KCR’s TRS, wins Dubbaka bypoll in Telangana after weeks of heated campaign

Exits polls had predicted an easy win for the ruling TRS, with the Congress expected to put up a fight. Instead, the BJP won by a slender 1,079 votes.

BJP workers celebrate the party’s bypoll win at Dubakka in Telangana | Twitter: @BJP4Telangana

Hyderabad: The BJP sprang a surprise at the Dubakka bypoll in Telangana after beating the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) by a slender margin of 1,079 votes.

BJP’s Madhavaneni Raghunandan Rao secured 63,352 votes after 25 rounds of counting, while the TRS’s Solipeta Sujatha secured 62,273 votes.

Sujatha is the wife of former TRS MLA Solipeta Ramalinga Reddy, whose death in September necessitated the bypoll. 

This is by far the most intense bypoll that Telangana has seen. It was a nail-biter throughout the day, with the BJP maintaining a lead in most rounds until the 14th one, when the TRS nosed ahead for the next seven rounds. 

The BJP, however, regained the lead in the 22nd round and hung on until counting ended. 

The vote count, which was supposed to be concluded in 23 rounds, was extended by two more rounds due to a ‘technical error’ in four EVMs.

VVPATS linked to only two EVMs were counted and the BJP candidate was declared a winner. The remaining were not counted as Rao had by then amassed a lead more than the votes polled in the EVMs. 

Even before the Election Commission started counting the pending EVMs, Municipal Minister and TRS working president K.T. Rama Rao, or KTR as he is known, conceded defeat, sparking grand celebrations at the BJP office. 

“The chief minister often asked where is BJP in the state? Today, I want to tell him — it is just 1 km away from Gajwel (Chief Minister KCR’s constituency), 3 km away from Sircilla (KTR’s bastion) and 1 km away from Siddipet (Finance Minister Harish Rao’s constituency),” an elated BJP state president Bandi Sanjay said. 

Exit polls had predicted an easy victory for the ruling TRS. But not only did the saffron party manage to win, the Congress was way off the pace, having polled just 13.5 per cent of the overall votes.  

Despite the pandemic, the Dubbaka bypoll had a voter turnout of 82.1 per cent. 

“I take the responsibility for this loss. I thank all the party workers who’ve worked for this bypoll. We will introspect the reasons behind this loss,” said Harish Rao. 

The Dubakka win is massive for the BJP, which lost a majority of its deposits in the 119 seats in the assembly polls of 2018. The party won only one seat.

BJP’s aggressive campaign

The byelection saw high voltage drama, almost on par with the state assembly elections in 2018, with the BJP and the TRS squaring off on a number of occasions.

The heated political drama began last month, when police allegedly seized Rs 18.67 lakh from the home of a relative of BJP candidate Raghunandan Rao. The BJP cried foul and alleged that the money was “planted” by the police. What followed was a scuffle between the police and hundreds of BJP workers. The BJP went all out and protested, with Union Minister Amit Shah also taking stock of the situation.

Following that, the Hyderabad police seized almost Rs 1 crore, allegedly from another relative of the BJP candidate.

KTR then alleged that the BJP was trying to incite violence and disrupt law and order in Hyderabad and across the state. Speaking at a press meet, KTR said his party had received a tip-off from saffron party leaders on this.

The BJP, however, hit the streets to point out how the constituency lacked development and was ignored by the top TRS minister, compared to their own constituencies that were immediate neighbours to Dubbaka.

BJP looking to displace

The BJP’s efforts in the bypoll were to displace the Congress as the principal opposition party. “We want to create an impression that we are a strong alternative to TRS and not the Congress. Congress is no more a political force in Telangana — we want to show this to people,” BJP MLC Ramchander Rao had earlier told ThePrint.

The BJP has one MLA — the controversial Raja Singh who was at the centre of the Facebook hate row recently — in the southern state, but four MPs.

For Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s TRS, winning this constituency is a matter of pride and equally important. It has high electoral significance because Dubbaka borders Gajwel — represented by KCR himself — and Sircilla, which is represented by his son KTR.

Dubbaka also borders Siddipet, held by Harish Rao, who is KCR’s nephew. Rao had spearheaded the entire campaign in the constituency.

BJP candidate M. Raghunandan Rao was also a close associate of the chief minister and had held key posts in the TRS. He, however, moved to the BJP and contested the 2018 assembly elections and the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, only to lose both. But Rao has a significant local presence in the constituency.