A day before the counting of GHMC polls, political parties are pretty clear about where they stand and the two major parties — Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — don’t expect any serious reversal of their estimates made after polling.
It looks amply clear that the ruling party will emerge the strongest despite losing a few of their existing seats followed by the BJP, which will not be seriously disappointed either, even if they end up at 20 odd. However, the contesting candidates will surely spend a sleepless night.
The TRS leaders spent little time analysing the polling or the expected results on Thursday with Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao in Nakrekal for the funeral of TRS MLA Nomula Narsimhaiah. TRS working president and Municipal Minister K.T. Rama Rao, who was the face and the figure of the party in the campaign, too was busy visiting his constituency Sircilla far away from the GHMC limits.
A senior leader agreed that they would anyway emerge as the largest party and there was little to worry. “We will win more than 75 seats, which is quite commendable for the fact that we are not seriously in contention in 45 seats in Old City, where MIM is strong. So, winning 75 in 105 would be quite satisfactory,” he argued.
The Congress party, which was morally down with their performance in Dubbak, lost the plot initially itself, with the BJP whipping up the nationalistic euphoria and deliberately letting the religious narrative emerge in the campaign. The ruling TRS too, made it out as a fight between BJP and TRS leaving little space for Congress to join the battle.
The party now prefers to just watch the outcome, realising there is nothing for them to anxiously wait for. Its only interest however, is to watch the vote share it received in each division. The winning seats, even if they are in single digit, will help the leaders make a political statement within the party. The results will stir up discussion on the leadership and the clamour for change will get shriller.
The exit polls by various agencies showed huge variations in their projections for different parties both in terms of numbers and share of votes, and their projections seem to be increasingly off the radar. The winning number for the ruling party ranged from 68 to 102 and for the main challenger BJP between five and 35 in different surveys, totally confusing voters.
Political parties, however, have their methods of arriving at a rough figure and they expect the final results to be similar to that.