Voters back TRS again; Congress is ahead of BJP

Hyderabad: Voters in the state continued with their trend of giving different verdicts by giving the TRS an unprecedented victory in the local bodies elections. They had given the TRS a huge victory in the Assembly but restricted its numbers in the Lok Sabha elections and had backed the Congress and the BJP.

The results gave succour to the Congress which ended up second in most districts.

The BJP performed poorly, after expecting to emerge as the alternative to the ruling party on the back of its victory in four seats in the Lok Sabha elections.

The Congress showed that it was alive in all 32 districts by winning quite a few seats in the mandal parishad territorial committee elections but slipped in the zilla parishad territorial committee elections in Gadwal, Karimnagar, Warangal Urban and Rural districts.

In the eight districts of Jagtial, Jangaon, Kumara-mbheem-Asifabad, Medchal, Siddipet, Wanaparthy, Mulugu and Narayanpet, the Congress seats in the single digits in the ZPTC polls. It failed to win a majority of seats where it has MPs and MLAs.

In Nalgonda district, the Congress won only nine zilla parishad territorial committee seats but among the mandal parishad territorial committee seats it won 130. In Sangareddy district it won 101 MPTCs. In 10 districts, the Congress won more than 50 MPTCs.

In the zilla parishad territorial committee elections, the BJP could not open its account in 29 out of the 32 districts in the state that went to the polls, minus Hyderabad. It did not win a single seat in the MPTC elections.

Out of 5,318 MPTCs, the BJP won around 210, and out of the 538 ZPTCs, six. It won 4 ZPTC is Adilabad and two in Nizamabad. The BJP had won both the Lok Sabha seats.

In the Assembly elections in December, the BJP won only one seat out of 119 but won four Lok Sabha seats last month. After this, it expected to emerge as a big political force in Telangana state, overtaking the Congress and rivalling the TRS.