TRS has now won three of five by-elections held since 2018

TRS party has now secured three of the five by-elections held in Telangana since the 2018 Assembly elections, taking its strength to 104 in the 119-strong Assembly.

Hyderabad: With the Munugode victory, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (now Bharat Rashtra Samithi) continues to enjoy the unflinching support of people of the State. The party has now secured three of the five by-elections held in the State since the 2018 Assembly elections, taking its strength to 104 in the 119-strong Assembly.

Among the bypolls, the TRS secured Huzurangar with a majority of 43,348 votes, Nagarjuna Sagar with 18,449 votes, and now Munugode with over 10,000 votes. The Huzurabad by-election was secured by the BJP with a margin of 23,855 votes, while the TRS (BRS) lost the Dubbak bypoll by a slender margin of 1079 votes to the BJP.

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Though the party lost two of its sitting seats – Dubbak and Huzurabad – to the BJP, it not only retained its Nagarjuna Sagar seat, but also secured two new seats in the form of Huzurnagar and Munugode, both won by the Congress in the 2018 elections.

According to political analysts, the Munugode victory will instill renewed energy in the party cadre ahead of the party leadership planning to spread its presence to other States. The party senior leaders too admit that the consecutive wins in Nagarjuna Sagar and Munugode by-elections, have proved that the unflinching faith among the people on Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao‘s leadership has only grown multifold.

“This victory is the first stepping stone for the BRS’ journey. It is also the only Assembly seat gained by a non-BJP party among the seven Assembly constituencies in six States which faced the by-elections. The Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar and the ShivSena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray) in Maharashtra retained their seats. Elsewhere, the BJP dominated its opponents,” a political analyst pointed out, adding that in Telangana, the loss was all the more debilitating for the Congress, which now has its presence in the Assembly dwindling from seven to five.