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Telangana result: Congress upbeat

Special Correspondent

We haven’t won in the region for two decades: Moily
“TRS sought to turn the by-election into a referendum”

NEW DELHI: The Andhra Pradesh by-elections brought good tidings for the Congress on Sunday with the party picking up one Lok Sabha constituency and six Assembly seats in the Telangana region which has traditionally cold-shouldered it.

Though the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) — which forced the by-election on the State by resigning en masse from Parliament and the Assembly earlier this year — maintained its lead in the region, the mood in the Congress camp was particularly upbeat as it came a close second.

The TRS got two of the four Lok Sabha seats and seven of the 17 Assembly segments in the Telangana region where by-elections were held last week. The fourth Lok Sabha seat went to the Telugu Desam Party which also got four Assembly segments.

“This is a region where we have not been winning any seats for two decades. Whatever we gained in the 2004 election was due to the alliance that the Congress had with the TRS and the Left parties. This time, we contested on our own; so this is a bonus for us. It is a reflection of the popularity of the Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy government and the Congress among the people of the region,” said Veerappa Moily, who is in charge of the party in the State.

He pointed out that the TRS had sought to turn the by-election into a referendum on statehood for Telangana. “We did not agree with this and used the development plank.”

Much is being read into the Karimnagar Lok Sabha constituency result where TRS chief K. Chandrasekhara Rao held on to his seat by just 15,765 votes as against over two lakh votes in the last by-election in December 2006 when he polled 47.61 per cent of the total votes. On both occasions, the Congress was the first runner-up.

Internally, also, the result has come as a shot in the arm for the Congress establishment which has been battling the pro-Telangana lobby within the party led by Lok Sabha member G. Venkatswamy. Only on Saturday, he had created a bit of a stir within the CWC, threatening to walk out in protest against the delay in giving statehood to Telangana.

While other members in the CWC stepped in and pacified him, Mr. Venkatswamy told The Hindu that he warned the Congress leadership of the pitfalls in delaying the decision any further. On Sunday morning, Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel also met Mr. Venkatswamy and is understood to have told him to be patient.

About the election result, Mr. Venkatswamy said it should in no way be read as the ebbing of the Telangana sentiment as all three parties contested the election with the promise of separate statehood.

But, he added, the result showed that the people of the region had lost faith in the TRS as the party which would bring statehood to Telangana.

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