Hyderabad: The ruling Telengana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) suffered a setback in the Lok Sabha elections in Telangana, winning lower-than-expected nine seats as a resurgent BJP sprang a surprise emerging victorious in four constituencies Thursday. The Congress also put up a decent show, securing three seats in the state which has 17 constituencies.
Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s daughter K Kavitha crashed to a shock defeat in Nizambad, from where she sought re-election. Kavitha lost by 71,057 votes to BJP’s D Arvind. She had bagged the seat by a margin of 1,67,184 votes in 2014.
The TRS had an electoral understanding with AIMIM and the two parties had repeatedly expressed confidence of winning all the seats.
The final outcome coupled with the NDA securing majority on its own in Lok Sabha dashed Rao’s hopes of a key role for himself in national politics.
Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president N Uttam Kumar Reddy (Nalgonda) and its working president Revanth Reddy (Malkajgiri) were among those declared elected by the Election Commission.
The BJP retained Secunderbad, the lone seat it won in the 2014 elections, and improved its tally by adding three more. Party nominee G Kishan Reddy won the seat with a margin of over 62,000 votes.
BJP’s Bandi Sanjay Kumar was elected from Karimnagar by defeating B Vinod Kumar (TRS), who was deputy floor leader of TRS in Lok Sabha, in Karimnagar by 89,508 votes, Uttam Kumar Reddy, currently a member of the Legislative Assembly from Huzurnagar, won the Nalgonda seat by a margin of 25,682 votes over his TRS rival V Narasimha Reddy.
Congress candidate and former Union Minister Renuka Chowdary (Khammam) and TRS senior leader Vinod Kumar were among the prominent losers.
PTI