The victory of former Telangana health minister Eatala Rajender in the by-election to Huzurabad assembly seat with a margin of nearly 24,000 votes over the Telangana Rashtra Samithi was certainly a shot in the arm for the Bharatiya Janata Party which is trying to emerge as a strong alternative to the TRS by next elections.
But what surprised everybody was the manner in which the Congress party fared in the Huzurabad by-election. Its candidate Balmuri Venkat may be an outsider for the constituency, but the Congress has considerable vote bank there.
Even in its worst phase of politics, the Congress could get good number of votes. The least number of votes the party had got in Huzurabad was 38,278 votes; and it was in 2014. In the last assembly elections, too, Congress candidate P Kaushik Reddy got more than 60,000 votes.
But in the latest by-elections in Huzurabad, the results of which were declared on Tuesday, the Congress could hardly get around 3,000 votes, which is a big humiliation for the national party which granted separate statehood to Telangana.
So, something has definitely gone wrong for the Congress or it could be part of the overall strategy of PCC president A Revanth Reddy. The TRS leaders, particularly state finance minister T Harish Rao alleged that the TRS had lost the by-poll because the Congress had colluded with the BJP.
“At the national level, the BJP and the Congress are arch rivals. Yet, in Huzurabad, both the parties formed an unholy nexus and entered into an unofficial and unethical alliance to defeat the TRS,” Harish Rao said.
Even Congress MP from Bhongir Komatireddy Venkat Reddy openly said the Congress had put up a weak candidate only to see that Eatala Rajender wins the Huzurabad seat. “After all, enemy’s enemy is our friend,” he said.
There must be definitely some truth in the allegations of Harish Rao and statement of Komatireddy. Reason is that the Congress definitely would not have polled such a less number of votes.
One doubts whether the party doesn’t have even 3,000 party workers in Huzurabad. Even in Badvel assembly constituency in Kadapa, where the Congress has virtually no existence, it could get over 6,000 votes in the just concluded by-elections.
“Even if all the Congress workers and their family members voted for Venkat in Huzurabad, he would have got not less than 15,000 votes. But they all voted for Rajender. Apparently, the party did not want the anti-TRS votes to get split as it would have benefitted the TRS,” a Congress leader said.
