HYDERABAD: Congress leaders put up a brave face when they congratulated TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao for his thumping victory in Karimnagar and described their narrow victory in the Bobbili Lok Sabha byelection as a `vote for development'.

Behind this demeanour, they must be a worried lot since the elections have once again catapulted Telangana to the top of the State's agenda in place of development which Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy had been assiduously trying to do. He even described the 1.76 lakh votes polled in Karimnagar by the Congress, which came a poor second, as `a vote for development'.

Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao, rejuvenated by the verdict which he described a referendum on Telangana, is bound to make things difficult for the United Progressive Alliance at the Centre and the Congress in the State by re-doubling his efforts for introduction of a Bill in Parliament for carving out a separate State. The oft-repeated Congress response is that AICC president Sonia Gandhi is seized of the matter and that the UPA is trying to build a consensus on Telangana.

Rumblings in ranks

A section of the Congress leaders is also restless. Already, there are rumblings against the senior leaders' failure to gauge the Telangana undercurrent and re-orient the election strategy in time. Pro-Telangana outfits in the Congress, dormant for some time to avoid adding strength to Mr. Rao's demand, will become active now. Having lost both the seats, the Telugu Desam Party is also agonising over the results, though for different reasons. Its strategy of "exposing the Congress' corruption" in irrigation projects did not yield the dividends it desired. In Bobbili, its campaign was squarely focussed on a personal attack against Marketing Minister Botcha Satyanarayana. In fact, the campaign in both byelections were marked by negative and sometimes even adoption of retrograde stands by the parties. Without exception, they disowned any role in the unanimous passage of a Bill in Parliament in 2003 making printing of a pictorial health warning on beedi bundles mandatory. Indulging in a blame game, they shed tears over the likely loss of employment rather than highlighting the injury to health caused by beedi smoking. Similarly, in Bobbili, the Congress and the TDP tried to pass on the responsibility to each other for initiating the proposal to establish a nuclear power plant at Kovvada village lying in the constituency.

BJP draws a blank

The BJP's debacle in these elections was comprehensive as it did not find the voters' favour either in coastal Andhra or Telangana. It could only draw consolation from the fact that the TDP had to pay the price in Bobbili for not having an alliance with the BJP.

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