NEW DELHI: The ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) suffered a huge blow in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) polls as it failed to win a clear majority. The TRS emerged as the single largest party but it is the BJP which is celebrating as it has made huge inroads in the fiercely contested civic body polls.
The K Chandrashekar Rao-led TRS, which had swept the 2016 civic polls winning 99 wards, has returned with a greatly reduced strength bagging only 55 wards this time. It will now need the support of Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM to run the GHMC.
The BJP, on the other hand, riding on a very aggressive star-studded campaign, that was led by Amit Shah and JP Nadda, has won 48 wards and has rightly claimed "moral victory" in these civic polls.
Upbeat over the party's impressive performance in the city civic poll, BJP state president Bandi Sanjay Kumar said it was a "saffron strike" in which the electorate reposed faith in the BJP and voted against the ruling TRS.
The AIMIM, the third key player in these elections, has held its ground bagging 44 municipal seats, which is same as what it had managed in the last elections.
Reacting on the poll results, Owaisi said his party is confident that Telangana people will stop BJP from expanding its foot print. "We will fight the BJP in a democratic way. We are confident that people of Telangana will stop BJP from expanding its footprints in the state," Owaisi said.
Union home minister Amit Shah, who held a road show on the last day of campaigning, thanked the people of Telangana for reposing faith in the PM Modi-led BJP's politics of development.
KT Rama Rao, who managed the TRS campaign, claimed that the party lost with extremely narrow margins in about 10 to 12 divisions.
"I thank people of Hyderabad who chose TRS as the single largest party to represent them in Council. Result is certainly not what we expected, we're short of 20-25 seats," KTR said.
Congress relegated to distant fourthFor the Congress, the GHMC poll results will come as a huge disappointment. The party which won 2 seats in 2016 could not manage to better its tally despite all efforts.
The president of the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee N Uttam Kumar Reddy has resigned following the party's dismal performance in the civic polls.
The Congress saw key leaders leave the party ahead of the civic polls and has been relegated to a distant fourth in the civic body.
Significance of BJP's winThe BJP's impressive performance in these elections is significant as it clearly indicates that the party has replaced the Congress as the principal challenger to the TRS in the state.
In the last assembly elections, the BJP could manage to win only one seat with a vote share of 6.98 percent while the Congress had won 19 seats with a vote share of 28.43 percent.
However, in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP made impressive gains winning 4 seats with a vote share of 19.65 percent. The party followed this with a victory in the Dubbaka by-election.
With an eye on the next assembly elections, the BJP's all-out campaign in the civic polls, which raised several questions, was a well planned move to quickly move in and occupy the void created by a dwindling Congress in the state.
For the TRS, the results of the Hyderabad civic polls will be an eyeopener and an indication of the kind of challenge that awaits the ruling party in the next assembly elections.
(With agency inputs)