The ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) is heading for a landslide victory in the elections to urban local bodies (ULBs) — 129 municipal councils and corporations — with trends in the counting of votes taken up on Saturday morning confirming it.
In spite of the brave face being put up by the Opposition parties, particularly the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), they have failed to make much impact. Both the parties are faring badly with a distant second and third positions in winning the total number of wards – 2,727 in municipal councils and 325 in municipal corporations.
Till the forenoon, the TRS has bagged nearly 900 wards out of 1,600 results followed by the Congress (250) and the BJP (115) in municipal councils. Similar trend is prevails in the elections to the municipal corporations.
Except the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), other parties such as the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India-Marxist, and the Telugu Desam Party have struggled to make their presence felt. The AIMIM, however, has retained its hold in some pockets where it has a mass base.
After the landslide victories in Assembly and rural local bodies (RLBs) elections, the TRS’s victory in the ULBs elections makes its leadership stronger. The ULB election results are being attributed to the “hard work” of party working president K.T. Rama Rao, who incidentally said during the electioneering that it would be a referendum on his functioning, both as the working president and the Minister for Municipal Administration and Urban Development.
The Congress’ claim that its vote-bank was intact, as proved in the elections to Lok Sabha held in April last year, has fallen flat as its tally in municipal wards remained only around 10% of TRS numbers. Intense campaigning by party bigwigs such as Pradesh Congress Committee president N. Uttam Kumar Reddy, working presidents A. Revanth Reddy and Ponnam Prabhakar, Legislature Party Leader M. Bhatti Vikramarka, senior leaders T. Jeevan Reddy, Komatireddy Venkat Reddy and others has proved inept in mobilising the support of the electorate.
Meanwhile, Mr. Rama Rao reached the party headquarters Telangana Bhavan before the counting of votes began to follow the trends.
In spite of the allegations of the Opposition parties, mostly by the Congress and the BJP, that the ruling party has resorted to largescale poll-irregularities to influence the voters, it is the TRS leaderships’ reported cautioning of its Ministers that they may risk their Cabinet berths with a poor show in ULB elections that appears to have made the elected representatives put in extra efforts to ensure victory of its candidates.
