Congress Aims to End 20-Yr Long Winning Streak of BRS in Medak

Hyderabad: The Congress is aiming to end the BRS’s 20-year-long winning streak in the Medak Lok Sabha constituency. The tricolour party fielded a candidate from the Backward Classes, Neelam Madhu, there while the BRS and BJP fielded candidates P. Venkatrama Reddy and M. Raghunandan Rao from the Reddy and Velama castes respectively.

The Congress last won the Medak LS seat in the 1996 Lok Sabha polls but thereafter lost the polls there for the last 28 years. TPCC chief and chief minister A Revanth Reddy laid special focus on this constituency this time given its high political profile.

Medak is the home district of BRS chief and former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao. It remained a BRS bastion ever since he launched the TRS (now BRS) in 2001 to achieve statehood for the Telangana region.

Even in the 2023 December Assembly polls, despite the BRS losing power in the state by winning only 39 Assembly seats out of the

total 119, it continued its dominance over Medak LS constituency region by bagging six out of the seven Assembly seats there. The Congress won the Medak assembly seat.

In the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, BRS had an alliance with the Congress. The Congress lost the Medak seat to the BRS. The BRS fielded Ale Narendra and defeated BJP's P Ramchandra Reddy with a majority of over 1.20 lakh votes.

In the 2009 elections, the BRS had an alliance with the TDP. The BRS fielded actress Vijayashanthi, who defeated Congress candidate Chengala Narendranath with a slender margin of 6,000 votes.

In the 2014 elections, BRS chief Chandrashekar Rao contested from Medak Lok Sabha seat along with the Gajwel assembly seat and won both. Rao defeated Congress candidate P Shravan Kumar Reddy with a huge margin of nearly 4 lakh votes. Rao also won the Gajwel assembly seat. With BRS coming to power in Telangana in June 2014, Rao assumed office as the first Chief Minister of the new state. He retained the Gajwel assembly seat and resigned from the Medak Lok Sabha seat. This led to a bypoll there in Sept 2014.

The BRS fielded Kotha Prabhakar Reddy in the bypoll, who defeated Congress candidate V Sunitha Laxma Reddy with a thumping majority of 3.61 lakh votes.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BRS again fielded incumbent MP, Prabhakar Reddy from Medak. He defeated Congress candidate Gali Anil Kumar with a majority of nearly 2.20 lakh votes.

However, Prabhakar Reddy contested the recent assembly polls from Dubbak and won the seat. With this, the BRS has fielded retired IAS officer P Venkatrama Reddy. Reddy had worked as a Siddipet collector for several years, took VRS in Nov 2021 to join BRS, and was nominated as MLC in Dec 2021.

The BJP fielded former Dubbak MLA M Raghunandan from the Medak Lok Sabha seat this time. Raghunandan had contested the Medak Lok Sabha seat in 2019 and lost.

Barring BJP candidate Raghunandan, the other two candidates from Congress and BRS, Neelam Madhu and Venkatrama Reddy are new faces in the Lok Sabha polls. Madhu joined the Congress from the BRS in Nov 2023. He sought the Congress ticket for the Patancheru assembly seat. The Congress initially decided on his candidature from there in November last, but later backtracked and gave a ticket to Kata Srinivas Goud. Angered at this, Madhu quit the Congress, joined the BSP, and contested from Patancheru, but he lost to the BRS.

Madhu joined the Congress again in February and the Congress party gave him the ticket for the Medak Lok Sabha seat.