TRS leads in Hyderabad civic body election results, but fails to attain clear-cut majority, BJP gains firm footing
Last updated on February 21st, 2023 at 12:30 pm
TRS leads in Hyderabad: Hyderabad civic body elections, conducted on December 1, acted as a major confidence booster for Bhartiya Janta Party as it attained second highest number of seats (48), next to only Telangana Rashtra Samith (TRS). The ruling TRS won the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) polls, but much to its despair it could not hit clear-cut majority mark and ended up with 55 seats.
The unexpected neck-to-neck fight with BJP, gave a jolt to TRS which would be tying up with Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM). With regard to the news of forming an alliance, AIMIM, which won 44 seats, said, “We will discuss in the party.” The worst show was put up Congress, which could manage only two seats. Despite coming second, BJP emerged as the clear cut winner of the Hyderabad civic body polls contesting for 150 seats.
Union minister Amit Shah’s ‘Panchayat to Parliament’ strategy brought the party much success. Unlike like previous BJP leaders, Shah believed that every election was important for the party and focused on increasing BJP footprint at every level of governance. Odisha has been BJP’s first testimony of the ‘P to P’ strategy as it helped the party win 297 of the 853 zila parishad seats, which was a significant rise from 36 in 2012. Also it placed the party as the main opposition party in the state. It pushed the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) down to 473 seats from 651 in 2012. In a similar manner, now BJP emerged as the strongest competitor to the ruling TRS in Hyderabad.
Party used its most senior and seasoned leaders for campaigning in GHMC elections including BJP general secretary Bhupendra Yadav, Home minister Amit Shah, party president JP Nadda, Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, Union ministers Prakash Javadekar, Smriti Irani and MoS (Home) G Kishan Reddy, Lok Sabha member from Secunderabad, and party MP and BJYM national president Tejasvi Surya.
Besides, Hyderabad marked as an important territory for BJP as it wanted to expand its hold in South India and Hyderabad was the beginning point of this endeavour. In 2016 polls GHMC election, the Telangana Rashtra Samith (TRS) won 99 divisions, AIMIM won 44, BJP attained only four seats, while the rest of the three were taken by other parties and Independent candidates.
Yadav, who was also the in-charge of the GHMC elections called it a “moral victory” for BJP, which he believed would give the party much confidence while preparing for the 2023 Telangana assembly polls. Yadav said, “The results are very encouraging and a morale booster for the BJP, and in a way, it is a moral victory of the party. The results reaffirms that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership and his model of good governance has acceptability across regions.” TRS expressed its disappointment with the poll performance and the party’s working president KT Rama Rao said the results were not up to the party’s expectations. “Certainly the results are not what we expected. We were short of 20-25 seats,” he said.
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