Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao will face first litmus test of his popularity on Saturday when Medak lok Sabha seat goes for the bypoll. The low key campaign for the prestigious seat, which came to an end on Thursday, however, indicates that the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti has a clear upper hand over its two main rivals the BJP-TDP campaign and the Congress.
While the TRS pulled out all the stops to ensure that it retains the seat and Chief Minister KCR personally campaigned for party candidate Kotha Prabhakar Reddy seeking a half a million margin of victory, the BJP was the only other party to field some prominent leaders including Union Ministers to canvass support.
However, the Congress continues to appear rudderless with no national-level leader participating in the campaign and it was left to the State president Ponnala lakshmaiah and some other State-level leaders to face an aggressive TRS.
The by election was caused by the decision of KCR to quit the lok Sabha seat and retain Gajwel Assembly constituency. Having won the Medak seat with a margin of 3.9 lakh votes in May last, KCR has made it a prestige issue to retain the seat with bigger margin as Medak also happens to be his native district and the by election was being seen as a referendum on his performance so far.
With TRS just completing only 100 days and its honeymoon still continuing and the people largely giving the credit of achieving Telangana state to KCR, by election was likely to prove a cake walk for the TRS.
In his characteristic aggressive style, KCR targeted both his rivals terming them as “invalid notes” and “betrayers of Telangana State” and sought full support for his party and Government. “If the TRS candidate looses or his margin is reduced, other parties will make a big issue out of it to claim that KCR has lost popularity in his own district,” KCR told a massive meeting at Narsapur on Wednesday evening.
For the BJP, apart from the State president G Kishan Reddy and other State leaders, Union Ministers Prakash Javadekar, Piyush Goyal and Sadanand Gowda addressed series of election meetings. Their choice was strategic as the constituency has a sizeable chunk of Marathi and Kannada speaking voters.