Hyderabad: After sweeping state-wide municipal elections earlier this year, the Congress government’s inordinate delay in ringing the poll bugle for Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections has caused disquiet in the Cabinet, party members and citizens in general amid rising water and energy demands.
The last elections to the council were in December 2020, after which members served a five-year term. That ended on 10 February 2026; on the very next day the Telangana government reorganised the civic framework under the Core Urban Region (Integrated Governance) Act, 2026, splitting GHMC and adjusting municipal corporation structures.
Speculation about the imminent elections has been rife since February, after the Congress government divided GHMC and 27 municipalities within the outer ring road (ORR) into three municipalities: GHMC, Cyberabad Municipal Corporation (CMC), and the Malkajgiri Municipal Corporation (MMC). All three corporations are currently governed by the Core Urban Region (Integrated Governance) Act, 2026, with the reorganised GHMC covering approximately 689 square km.
Even though the state government was quick to appoint commissioners and special officers to run the civic bodies after the terms of elected members lapsed, it has repeatedly delayed the notification for elections to the municipal bodies.
With the Invest Telangana Summit scheduled for December, however, Congress leaders told ThePrint that there is no certainty that elections for these three Hyderabad corporations, alongside those in Khammam and Warangal, could take place this year.
“Who is ready for the GHMC election? Neither the party cadre nor the government is ready to conduct the corporation elections. With the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) looking to put up a tough fight, the Congress needs to deliver on its guarantees to displace the opposition which won handsomely in the previous elections,” Jagga Reddy, Telangana Congress Working President, told ThePrint.
The last time the Congress party had its representative as a mayor was between 2009 and 2012, before Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated. At the time, the grand old party (GOP) had shared the post with the All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM). In the elections after Telangana was formed, the Congress nearly drew a blank, winning two seats each time in the 2016 and 2020 corporation elections.
Some legislators are more optimistic than Jagga Reddy, from the ‘OG Congress’ bloc.
“We expect to do better in the upcoming elections not only in GHMC, but also in Warangal and Khammam, which are traditional strongholds of the Congress. We have offered jobs to 70,000 youth in the state, and the Graduate constituency elections in January 2027 will also be favourable to us. While I cannot speculate on when the GHMC polls will be announced, we expect it to be held sooner rather than later, ” Venkat Balamoor, a Congress Member of the Legislative Council told ThePrint.
The current delay stands in stark contrast to the swift, aggressive manner in which former Chief Minister and BRS founder K. Chandrashekar Rao held the elections soon after he formed the government both in 2014 and 2018.
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Reasons for delay
Calling the strategic delay a calculated political pause, Venkat Balamoor and other senior Congress leaders said the Grand Old Party, which is dominant in rural and semi-urban Telangana, is trying to fortify its structural, economic, and legislative vulnerabilities before facing a highly divided and aggressive electorate in the capital city.
Congress leaders explain that Revanth Reddy, heading the Municipal Administration and the Urban Development department, wants to ensure the Congress reaps the advantage of breaking up the historically fixed vote banks of the BRS and BJP in consolidated areas by splitting the civic body. By enlarging the total footprint from 150 to 300 wards, the party hopes to open up fresh micro-battles where the ruling party can leverage state machinery and development funds, they said.
However, despite creating three commissionerates, the negative perception created by HYDRAA (Hyderabad Disaster Response and Asset Protection Agency) and the hundreds of court cases filed by litigants have offset the plausible gains from the trifurcation, analysts warned. Political observers such as Nanduri Vara Prasad point out that the urban voter is highly reactive to infrastructure issues, and that localised delays in urban mega-projects and public dissatisfaction regarding civic administration, which has only been growing, have led the chief minister to delay the polls.
Congress insiders acknowledge the discontent. Factors like the recent El Niño, which has dried up farmlands, borewells, and reservoirs, have strained city infrastructure, and a slow rollout of the Indiramma houses in the urban areas has only led to the Congress’ voter base in the city growing more volatile, leaders say.
This has put the brakes on the otherwise aggressive campaigns by Congress leaders, who have avoided visiting their constituencies and limited their outreach to specified pockets only.
Yet, the GHMC remains a highly contested multi-cornered space. With Andhra Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister K. Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena Party (JSP) also throwing its hat in the ring, another dimension of Andhra settlers’ votes has been added to the existing mix.
The Congress could also be wary of the Backward Classes (BCs) in the state, the leaders added. “The party committed to not only an extensive state-wide caste census before finalising reservations for BCs in local bodies, but also said it would allocate a greater number of seats to the BC communities before announcing the polls. Pushing the elections forward without completing this data risks alienating a massive 54 per cent voting bloc,” Analyst Nanduri Vara Prasad said.
The GHMC region covers 24 Assembly seats and spans three core parliamentary seats, heavily dictating Telangana’s power balance. In the 2023 Assembly elections, the BRS won 16 seats, the AIMIM seven, and the BJP won the Goshamahal seat, leaving nothing for the Congress. Also, with the BJP winning all three Lok Sabha seats in the GHMC region, the successful execution of the promised infrastructure projects is a must for the Congress to redraw the mathematical reality of the GHMC region, political observers said.
With the success of the Assembly and the municipality polls hingeing entirely on the welfare narrative, the Congress has yet to execute a major project in the ORR limits and convert it into visible civic infrastructure management. The chief minister has offered to personally look into the implementation of the Musi Rejuvenation Project and the Future City—both of which could adversely affect his reputation if there is no significant impact for the citizens.
But the more pressing reason is state finances, Opposition leaders told ThePrint. The state faces immense pressure from the Union Government, as continuous delays in holding local body polls threaten the release of crucial Finance Commission grants. The Congress state treasury is seen to be pacing its expenditures, and in his repeated trips to Delhi, Reddy has pressed the Centre for giving its nod for the metro rail and bullet train projects to meet the immediate capital expenditure needs.
“So, the reasons for the delay are much more than a simple case of administrative rejig of the GHMC or politics. Revanth Reddy’s hesitation to call the GHMC elections is a sophisticated, multi-layered gambit, with political survival, bureaucratic restructuring, fiscal balancing, and a deep-seated wariness of a resurgent BRS and an ambitious BJP,” Nanduri Vara Prasad said.
This is an updated version of the report.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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