Saaru, Kaaru, Padaharu ’ was the electioneering slogan for the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS). TRS’ Working President and Chief Minister’s son K T Rama Rao’s maiden task as the party head was to ensure 16 Lok Sabha seats.

The outcome is not something that K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) had anticipated. His party is likely to win only 9 seats out of the 17 Lok Sabha seats in the State.

The BJP and Congress surprisingly maintained leads in four and three seats respectively. The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) President Asaduddin Owaisi clinched the Hyderabad constituency.

Instead of increasing its tally, TRS now faces the prospect of fewer seats than the 11 it got in 2014.

The CM’s daughter K Kavitha was defeated by a huge margin in Nizamabad against BJP candidate Aravind.

KCR’s target to win 16 Lok Sabha seats was an important step for his national political ambitions. KCR had announced that he was forging a Third Front, which would primarily be a non-BJP and non-Congress alliance nationally, hoping to unleash the potential of regional party.

Now that the NDA has swept to a massive victory, the role for such a front doesn’t exist.

But what should worry the TRS supremo is the dramatic gains made by the Congress and surprise wins for the BJP. It’s a kind of paradox — the two parties that he wanted to keep a check on nationally have made significant gains.

To focus on national politics, KCR advanced the elections to the Assembly and won 88 seats. Without hiding his ambition to play a ‘bigger role’ in Delhi, he made sorties to Kolkata, Bhubhaneshwar, Chennai, Bengaluru and Thiruvananthapuram to win over the regional leaders.

His idea was to create a block of regional parties, which would hold the key in the event of a hung Parliament like situation after the polls. That scenario doesn’t count any more.

Congress revival

The Congress had won just 19 seats in the Assembly and most of the legislators dumped the party and shifted their loyalties to the TRS.

In complete shambles, no one imagined the Congress could win three Lok Sabha seats.

The rise of BJP is not good news for KCR. The party, which had won just one seat in the 119-seat Assembly, now secured three (Adilabad, Karimnagar and Secunderabad) and is leading in another (Nizamabad).

K T Rama Rao said that even though the party fell short of its target of 16 Lok Sabha seats, the party still won the majority (9) seats.

Thanking the voters for giving them the majority mandate, he said the party would hold internal meetings with local leaders to discuss the reasons for the defeat.

Addressing a brief press conference here Thursday evening, he alleged that the large number of candidates that contested the Nizamabad constituency were not farmers.

comment COMMENT NOW