Officials preparing for counting of votes for municipal elections in Khammam on Monday.
Hyderabad: The TRS juggernaut steamrolled the opposition – the so-called national parties Congress and BJP – through the just-concluded election season, capping its victorious march winning all the seven Urban Local Bodies including the Greater Warangal Municipal Corporation and Khammam Municipal Corporation on Monday.
The decimation was complete, establishing the TRS as the party of the masses with development of the State and welfare of the people as its only agenda. The Congress’ attempts to sway the electorate with false promises and the BJP’s politics of religion fell flat as people opted for development.
In contrast, Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao’s message to the people during the election was simple and straight – look around you and decide for yourself whether the TRS delivered on its various promises. Agriculture, irrigation, industry, infrastructure, pensions and welfare initiatives covering all sections, drinking water, employees’ welfare, the list can go on where the TRS government ensured justice to all.
The bigger takeaway from the two graduate MLC elections, the Nagarjuna Sagar Assembly by-poll and now the municipal election results is that the BJP is as much a political non-entity in Telangana as the Congress, despite the party nurturing dreams of making major inroads in the State. The saffron party, which failed miserably in the Sagar bypoll with its candidate facing the ignominy of losing the deposit amount, not only failed to make any dent in the municipal polls, but even failed to open its account in some municipalities. The same was the case with the Congress.
The string of victories by the TRS also proves that the BJP win in the Dubbak by-election was a one-off stroke of luck. Remember the hullabaloo after the Dubbak bypoll, when the BJP State leadership declared that the saffron party had arrived in Telangana? The drubbing it received at the hands of the TRS in consecutive elections should serve as an eye-opener for the BJP.
If one were to take a larger perspective of the BJP’s performance across the country in the recent Assembly elections along with the polls in Telangana, it is clear that the saffron party has only been able to make inroads in places where there is no alternative. But in Telangana, there is no alternative to the TRS, and the sooner the BJP State leadership realizes this fact, the better it will be for them.