TDPs decision to contest bypolls worries KCR

With the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) also deciding to contest the byelections to 12 assembly seats apart from the Congress, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) president K Chandrasekhar Rao is a worried man. For the internal assessments point to the party not faring well in at least 4 of the 10 seats it held with the chances of a defeat too not being ruled out. Of the 12 MLAs who resigned in February in protest against the Centres reversal on Telangana, 10 belong to the TRS and one each to the TDP and the BJP. The Congress last week made it clear that it would contest the polls and TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu too announced his decision to follow suit on Thursday. With a triangular contest on the cards in all the 10 assembly seats,the going is not that easy for the TRS, admitted a party leader.

The biggest concern for the TRS is the Sircilla seat in Karimnagar. At the last moment, KCR had set aside the candidature of local party leader KK Mahender Reddy and fielded his son K Taraka Rama Rao in the last elections. Rama Rao managed to scrap through by a margin of 171 votes with Mahender Reddy faring a strong second. Mahender Reddy has since joined the Congress and is most likely going to be the Congress candidate from Sircilla. Mahender Reddy is a local candidate and enjoys tremendous support. Besides, the presence of the TDP, which has a seizable number of votes here, will eat into the TRS votes and strengthen the case of Mahender Reddy, say TRS leaders.

In Dharmapuri (SC) seat in Karimnagar, the TRS had managed to win only by 1,484 votes over its nearest Congress rival. A triangular fight is once again making the going tough for the TRS. So is the case with Warangal (West), from where the TRS won by 6,684 votes, and Sirpur in Adilabad from where it emerged victorious by 7,414 votes. If the TDP will be a factor in the bypolls,the absence of the Prajarajyam party will also be another. The PRP managed to secure between 20,000 to 9,000 votes in each of these 10 assembly seats in the 2009 elections. But the good showing then was because it had championed the Telangana cause. The PRP votes are likely to be split between the TRS, Congress and TDP, said an analyst.

The entry of the TDP into the fray has raised some hopes of a good showing in the Congress camp. Although the Congress lost from all the 12 seats where the bypolls are scheduled, it ended up as the losing party in all of them. We are confident of winning at least 4 seats including Sircilla and Vemulawada (from where the TDP scraped through by a margin of 1821 votes), said a Congress leader.
KCR is holding hectic parleys with his senior colleagues to devise a strategy to retain the 10 seats in an election that was forced by him for the second time over the Telangana issue. The last time, it was able to win only 10 of the 16 assembly seats it had held. This time around too, it appears to emerge with fewer seats than what it held.
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(source-toi)