Hyderabad: A 21% dip in vote share for the Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) and an equal gain for the BJP compared to the assembly polls six months ago summarises the huge stride the saffron party took in Telangana in the general election.
In the process, the BJP doubled its seats in parliament from the state – from the four it won in 2019 to eight now – to level with the ruling Congress, which also gained substantially in comparison to previous elections. The Congress was up from just three seats.
The BJP’s surge invited a serious charge by chief minister and Telangana Congress committee president A. Revanth Reddy that there was a clandestine understanding between the BRS and the BJP to ensure a transfer of votes to benefit the latter party and, at the same time, mar the Congress’s prospects.
This idea was also supported by All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen president Asaduddin Owaisi.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
However, political analyst K. Nageshwar has said that the Congress failed to substantiate its allegations with irrefutable evidence. He said no party would want to lose such a huge chunk of its votes.
The BRS’s votes shifted because it had no national narrative to offer either in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) or the INDIA bloc.
BRS president and former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao realised his party was vulnerable this way and tried hard in the general election campaign to promote the idea that neither grouping would get a majority in the elections. He insisted that regional parties would play a key role in forming a government at the Centre.
The BJP’s emergence as a major force ahead of the BRS was also traced to the Congress’s failure to mount an anti-BJP campaign. The party was complacent on the challenge posed by BJP.
Also, the BJP generally fared better than other national parties in the general election because of its Hindutva agenda among other reasons.
It was obvious that what worked against the Congress in not winning more seats was its obsession to fight the BRS rather than the BJP.
The poor selection of its candidates was also cited as another reason for its not being able to put up a much better performance. It selected last-minute dropouts from other parties as its candidates.
The BJP also fielded fresh recruits to the party in nine out of Telangana’s seventeen Lok Sabha constituencies. Of them, only one candidate won.
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Election Commission data has revealed that the BJP’s vote share rose by two-and-a-half times. The Congress’s share also increased marginally from 39.7% in the assembly elections to about 40%, reflecting the status quo in its position.
Therefore, some argue that the BJP’s surge was not related to any anti-incumbency against the Congress government and that it was merely due to a shift in the BRS’s vote bank. In other words, all of the votes the BRS lost shifted to the BJP.
The BRS’s voting percentage dipped from 37.6% in the assembly polls to a little less than 17% now. It had secured 41.7% of the votes in the 2019 general election – a roughly 25 percentage point decrease when compared its performance this year.
Nageshwar, the political analyst, said that in an intensely polarised battle between the NDA and INDIA, it was not just the BRS but other parties that were also not aligned with any grouping, such as the YSR Congress, the Biju Janata Dal and the Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam that suffered this time.
Out of the 39 assembly seats the BRS won, the party secured a majority in only three segments in the present elections. The BJP, which won eight assembly seats, stood first in 45 segments.
The Congress secured a majority in 64 segments. It won 64 seats during the assembly elections but didn’t secure a majority in the same seats in the general election.
The BRS’s performance was so pathetic that it trailed behind the BJP in 16 assembly constituencies in and around Hyderabad, which it had won with ease in the assembly elections. Out of the 39 assembly seats under its belt, it surrendered majorities to the BJP in 24 and to the Congress in 12.
The majority in former CM Rao’s Gajwel constituency fell from 45,000 to 20,000. The majority in his nephew T. Harish Rao’s Siddipet seat dipped from 84,000 to 2,800 and that in his son K.T. Rama Rao’s Sircilla was surrendered to the BJP.
In this context, Revanth Reddy alleged a wholesale transfer of the BRS’s vote bank to the BJP with the aim of destabilising the Congress government. He warned that the BRS will be decimated if it made any such attempt.
He also alleged that Rao allotted tickets to weak candidates and asked the BRS cadre to work for the BJP.
Read all of The Wire’s reporting on and analysis of the 2024 election results here.
