HYDERABAD: The micro-level outreach to the masses seems to be helping the TRS in containing the anti-incumbency mood in Munugode, which might otherwise have handed over the Assembly seat to incumbent Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy on a platter.
Munugode is set for a bypoll on November 3. Rajagopal Reddy will contest the poll on a BJP ticket. While Congress has announced Palvai Sravanthi’s candidature, the TRS will pick former MLA K. Prabhakar Reddy most likely on Wednesday.
Though no party is comfortably poised to win the bypoll or could confidently claim securing a 35 per cent plus vote share, the present trend shows the TRS is slightly ahead of Rajgopal and the Congress is in the third position.
“Leave aside the financial angle to the bypoll, the mass contact programme is really helping the ruling party to convince the voters on various schemes that have been successfully implemented by the KCR government and the qualitative change they brought in the lives of people,” claimed a TRS leader.
The party will step up its campaign after Dasara and deploy scores of ministers, MLAs and MPs including party working president K.T. Rama Rao and senior minister T. Harish Rao. Energy minister G. Jagadish Reddy, a lucky mascot for the party in bypolls after winning Huzurnagar and Nagarjunasagar, is already spearheading the campaign.
BJP poll managers have been taking a cue from Chandrashekar Rao in strategising on its approach. “In pre-bifurcation bypolls, KCR could successfully infuse a fear in the minds of the electorate that his defeat would be a defeat for the Telangana cause. In the process, even those who did not like him or his method of fighting for Telangana rallied behind him,” said a party poll strategist.
The BJP would attempt a greater convergence of the anti-TRS votes with a slogan that victory for the TRS would upset the greater cause of getting Telangana rid of the Chandrashekar Rao family and its “corrupt” rule.
The party has been making good use of the alleged involvement of Chandrashekar Rao’s daughter and MLC K. Kavitha in the Delhi liquor scam and the recent raids by Central agencies on companies having affiliations with the ruling party leaders.
As for the Congress, the selection of Sravanthi as its candidate helped the party to get into the race easily unlike in Huzurabad where it was a washout and the party got just 1,500 votes.
Sravanthi’s connect with Congress leaders as well as the general public and her father’s contributions to the constituency are seen as positive factors. But, her inability to match with the two rivals in the matter of spending money for the campaign might prove to be her Achilles heel, some party leaders opined.
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