After a long winding campaign, Telangana’s Huzurabad Assembly constituency is all set for a bypoll Saturday. Both the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), which has held the seat for nearly two decades, and former minister Eatala Rajender who has now emerged the main challenger to TRS after serving the constituency for four terms on a TRS ticket, are hoping to retain their ground. Whether the voters prefer their popular leader Rajender or their favourite party TRS would be known only on November 2 when the results are announced. Polling will be held from 7 am to 7 pm. Authorities have set up 306 polling stations. As many as 1,17,933 males, 1,19,102 females, and one person in the other category are eligible to cast their vote. 1,715 polling personnel and 3,865 police personnel, including the central paramilitary forces, will be on the ground on poll duty. The Election Commission has made it mandatory for voters to wear a mask inside the polling booths. Their body temperatures would be screened and they would be handed disposable gloves as part of Covid protocols. As many as 30 candidates are in the fray but the contest appears neck-and-neck between TRS and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which secured fewer votes than NOTA in the 2018 assembly polls. The bye-election was necessitated following Rajender’s resignation on June 4 from the TRS and his MLA post after being dropped unceremoniously from the Cabinet on May 1 over allegations of land grabbing by a company owned by his family. Rajender is now BJP’s candidate and the bye-election is seen as a political battle of one-upmanship between Rajender and his former boss Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao. Rajender, a six-time MLA and a strong BC community leader with no track record of corruption, had hit the campaign on an emotional note seeking support for his dignity and self-respect. He has alleged a witch hunt by CM Rao. The TRS, on the other hand, fielded Gellu Srinivas Yadav, state president of the party’s student wing, to challenge Rajender. Assuming Rajender would try to evoke Telangana sentiments by recalling his contributions to the TRS during the separate statehood movement, TRS found Srinivas Yadav, also a BC community leader from the same constituency, who had actively partaken in the separate statehood agitation. TRS ministers and leaders have openly stated that Rajender’s victory in the bye-election would disrupt the development path laid by the TRS in the constituency and that Rajender as an opposition MLA would not be able to do anything for the constituents. Finance Minister T Harish Rao, who led the TRS campaign in Huzurabad, has repeatedly reminded the voters that Rajender did not quit his MLA post or the TRS party fighting people’s cause. TRS leaders have reiterated that Rajender failed to fully implement the TRS agenda of development and that a bye-election was necessitated due to Rajender’s personal interests. In the 2018 Assembly polls, Huzurabad recorded a voter turnout of 84 percent. Rajender, then fighting on a TRS ticket, had secured a vote share of over 59 percent by polling 1,04,840 votes. His victory margin over runner-up Padi Kaushik Reddy of Congress party was 43,719 votes. Now Kaushik Reddy is in TRS and has campaigned actively for the party. The then BJP candidate had secured only 1,683 of the total 1,76,723 votes polled. TRS has a brute majority of 103 in the 119 member-Assembly. After suffering a setback in the Dubbaka bye-election at the hands of BJP, it had comfortably won the recent Nagarjunasagar bye-election earlier this year. Notwithstanding the emerging challenges from an energized BJP and a rejuvenated Congress party, TRS hopes to assert its superiority with another victory before going into polls in December 2023.
