Six months ago, in the election to the Nandigram Assembly constituency, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was defeated by Suvendu Adhikari, who was once her close aide. A similar scene played out in Telangana recently. Eatala Rajender, a close confidante of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, fell out with the party leadership and resigned from his MLA post in June this year. Earlier this month, he won against the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS)’s Gellu Srinivas Yadav in the bypoll to the Huzurabad seat by a majority of 23,855 votes. This came as a surprise given the highly charged atmosphere in which the election was held amid allegations of distribution of money.
TRS working president K.T. Rama Rao had asserted earlier that the result would be in favour of the party. Given this confidence, the result is a bitter pill for the TRS leadership. The bypoll to Huzurabad was the fourth bypoll in the State in the last three years. The results have been a mixed bag for the TRS. It won the Huzurnagar and Nagarjunasagar bypolls but lost to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Dubbak and Huzurabad.
Switching camps
A series of events beginning May this year, around the time when the West Bengal election results were announced, saw Mr. Rajender being pushed to a corner. Mr. Rajender, a six-time MLA and Minister, was stripped of his health portfolio hours after a few beneficiaries of assigned lands in the Medak district complained to the Chief Minister that their lands were being encroached upon by the Minister for expansion of a poultry farm owned by his family. Two cases were filed on charges of encroachment against him and a committee of senior IAS officers was appointed to probe the allegations.
All the while, Mr. Rajender claimed that he was being framed by the TRS leadership and vowed to take on his detractors. After a brief silence, he joined the BJP. He launched ‘Praja Deevana (People’s blessing)’, a padayatra, in Huzurabad constituency and reached out to the electorate. The TRS government, meanwhile, began showering largesse worth hundreds of crores on the constituents and launched the much-hyped ‘Dalit Bandhu’, a scheme to empower Dalits in micro and small enterprises on a pilot basis in the constituency. This did not help the party.
Elbow space in the BJP
A soft-spoken Backward Classes leader with a good following in the constituency, Mr. Rajender’s latest victory is bound to give him some elbow space in the BJP. While the bypoll turned out to be a contest between the TRS and Mr. Rajender, the result is bound to give a boost to the BJP which was an insignificant player in the constituency till now. A senior BJP functionary says that Mr. Rajender will carve out a place for himself in the saffron party ahead of 2023 as a strong contender for the Chief Minister’s post along with State BJP chief Bandi Sanjay and Union Minister G. Kishan Reddy. Though the election has no bearing on 2023, it has given the BJP something to boast about.
Also read | TRS spent ₹600 crore for Huzurabad bypoll: Eatala
TRS leaders are trying to play down the results with Mr. K.T. Rama Rao claiming that the outcome will not have any significant impact on the State’s political scenario. But Mr. Rajender’s win is likely to halt defections to the ruling TRS from other parties at least for a brief while. It is also likely to embolden the disgruntled elements within to weigh their options.
Meanwhile, the Congress yet again has to find answers to its dismal performance, an addition to the series of poor results it has seen in the bypolls it has fought since 2019.
ravi.reddy@thehindu.co.in
