KCR king as ‘Praja’ rejects ‘Kutami’

Naveen S Garewal

Tribune News Service

Hyderabad, December 11

The gamble to go in for early Assembly poll has returned K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) and his Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) back to power with a thumping majority winning 88 of the 119 seats in the Telangana Assembly.

By securing whooping 73.1 per cent votes for a second term, the TRS has created history. The Congress-led “Praja Kutami” (grand alliance — ‘Praja’ means people, ‘Kutami’ front) is a distant second with only 21 seats (Congress 19 and Telugu Desam Party two). Despite deploying a galaxy of star campaigners in the state, the BJP could win only one seat. This is being seen as a “vote of approval” for KCR and his style of functioning, negating criticism by the Opposition that called him “autocratic, arrogant and corrupt”.

Just as the news of his coming to the Telangana Bhawan spread, thousands of party supporters burst into jubilation by throwing holi colours and bursting crackers. “The people have accepted and approved my style of functioning. It is not important where is I sit and work, more important is what I do for the people and the election results has proved that the people like my style of functioning that is delivery-oriented,” KCR said.

“I am sad that some of my Cabinet colleagues, including Speaker S Madhusudhana Chary, have lost. The Cabinet will be based on representations of various casts and communities, but I have not applied my mind to it yet. A meeting of TRS legislature party has been summoned for tomorrow, where all this will be discussed,” he said.

KCR won the Gajwel seat by a margin of 57,321 votes. He polled 1,23,996 votes, while his nearest Congress rival Vanteru Pratap Reddy got 66,675 votes.

K Kavitha, Nizamabad MP and daughter of KCR who was the campaign in charge for the party along with her brother KTR, said, “There is just one factor behind the victory of the TRS and that is people’s faith in the working of KCR. He knows the state like the back of his hand and has worked very hard to look after the welfare of each and every community.”

Congress said it suspected “manipulation” of EVMs and demanded that all votes be counted using the VVPAT (voter verified paper audit trail) to ascertain the exact number of votes polled by each candidate.

“Going by the distorted trends, there is a strong suspicion that EVMs have been manipulated. We demand that 100 per cent counting of VVPAT must be taken up in all constituencies,” party president N Uttam Kumar Reddy said. 

AIMIM wins 7 seats in Hyderabad again

• Asauddin Owaisi-led AIMIM won 7 of 8 seats it fought in Telangana, retaining its hold in traditional bastion of the old city of Hyderabad

• All 7 sitting MLAs, including Owaisi’s brother Akbaruddin, were re-elected

• AIMIM won in 7 Assembly constituencies for the first time in 2009 and repeated the feat in 2014

• Akbaruddin Owaisi, the star campaigner for the party, registered an emphatic win in Chandrayangutta seat, his fifth in a row since 1999, with a margin of 80,263 votes