Rama Krishna Sangem
Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy appears confident after a fair show by his ruling Congress in the just concluded sarpanches elections in Telangana. Out of around 12,700 village sarpanches, the ruling party backed persons won in not less than around 7,000. In my view, the gram panchayat elections have enhanced the confidence levels of the CM at two levels. One, the very smooth conduct of the elections without any problems from BC organisations that have been pressing for implementation of 42 per cent quota for them.
Second, the good show by the ruling Congress – achieving 56 to 60 plus per cent of the sarpanch posts. Interestingly, BRS chief and Leader of Opposition in the Assembly KCR too is more than happy over his party’s show – which won around 3,500 sarpanches – in these elections. Of courser, Revanth and KCR are more than satisfied with their performance for different reasons. If the CM is happy with his own party’s tally, former CM thinks these results are better than that of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Here I will confine to CM Revanth’s consolidation of position within and outside the party. In the 2023 December polls of the assembly, Congress won 64 MLAs out of the total 1119. That figure brought Congress to power, but not a comfortable majority at a time when the political atmosphere in the country is turbulent. BRS with 39 and BJP with 8 seats accounted f or 47, only 13 members short of tilting the scales. Of course, that didn’t happen anyways.
In the subsequent LS polls held after six months, Congress and BJP won 8 MPs each, while the remaining one went to AIMIM. Congress should not be happy with this tally, excepting the fact that BRS drew a zero. Revanth maintained a balanced face all through the phase. What brought him some happiness is the Congress win two assembly by-polls – Secunderabad Contonment (SC) and Jubilee Hills. With these two seats, Congress tally went to 66. And the party got representation from the limits of Hyderabad city.