The ruling Congress established a comfortable lead in the by-election to the Jubilee Hills Assembly constituency in Hyderabad as its candidate V Naveen Yadav was ahead of his Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) rival Maganti Sunitha by 19,797 votes after the completion of seven rounds of counting Friday.
The posters at Gandhi Bhavan, the Congress’s headquarters in Hyderabad, featured Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy’s image with a line, “Thaggedele (jhukega nahi)”, from Allu Arjun’s film “Pushpa”. Naveen Yadav’s home in Jubilee Hills also displayed huge cutouts of Revanth Reddy and state party president B Mahesh Kumar Goud.
The Jubilee Hills bypoll was seen as a test of people’s faith in the Congress government and Revanth Reddy’s leadership. For the K Chandrasekhar Rao-led BRS, it was perceived as a battle for survival.
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For the BJP, the bypoll was an opportunity to set the narrative in its favour in a state where it is keen to expand its footprint, with the Congress and the BRS accusing each other of being its “B-team”.
While the outcome of the Jubilee Hills bypoll will not significantly impact
Telangana politics, the campaign for this election was heated as it turned into a fight between three leading political players of the state – CM Reddy, BRS working president K T Rama Rao, and Union minister and BJP leader G Kishan Reddy.
What seemed to have worked in the Congress’ favour is the consolidation of Muslim votes. The electorate has over 1.4 lakh Muslim voters. While the Congress got the support of Asaduddin Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), the party also recently inducted its Muslim face Mohammed Azharuddin, former Indian cricket captain, into the Reddy Cabinet as the Minority Welfare Minister to further consolidate its Muslim support base.
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“Our strategy when it came to Jubilee Hills was to take all communities along,” Mahesh Kumar Goud told The Indian Express. In Muslim-dominated pockets such as Erragada, Vengalrao Nagar and Rehmat Nagar, the party seems to have done well, Congress leaders said.
The Congress’s renewed focus on the minority community was seen as a result of non-Muslim voters, most of whom hailing from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, apparently preferring to back the BRS to show their integration into the Telangana society.
The BRS’s candidate Maganti Sunitha is the wife of former party MLA from the constituency, Maganti Gopinath, whose death necessitated the bypoll.
The BJP fielded Lankala Deepak Reddy, who had lost from the same seat in the 2023 Assembly polls.
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Besides the consolidation of Muslim voters, the Congress leaders said several welfare schemes rolled out by the Revanth Reddy government also seemed to have found resonance among the voters. “In Jubilee Hills constituency, 2.4 lakh voters (of over 4 lakh voters) are beneficiaries of the fine rice scheme, through which each poor family is provided 6 kg of fine rice,” a Congress leader said.
The Congress camp said the party’s win in Jubilee Hills would boost its prospects in the coming urban local body polls, especially in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation elections. “In 2023 Assembly elections, the Congress basically won because of rural votes. But the Jubilee Hills bypoll has proved that the Congress government now has the support of urban voters as well,” a party insider said.
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