Voters in the constituency have witnessed the fiercest campaign ever — all for a term of a few months.
Published Nov 01, 2022 | 7:18 PM ⚊ Updated Nov 03, 2022 | 5:19 PM
TRS conducting the final rally ahead of Munugode bypoll. (trspartyonline/Twitter)
The turbo-charged campaigning by political parties ended at 6 pm on Tuesday, 1 November, for the Munugode by-election scheduled on 3 November. The blazing guns have fallen silent. The long winding speeches of candidates, the cacophony of songs belted out from mikes, disappeared as if they did not exist.
Now a thick blanket of silence envelopes the entire constituency.
But, as always, appearances are deceptive. Though there is no visible activity by the principal contenders, their foot soldiers are moving silently and wooing the voters with inducements. There have been reports that liquor has flooded villages.
There was no dearth in the supply of meat or chicken to the households, besides generous offerings of cash.
Cash seizures in crores of rupees have become a common phenomenon. The contenders are ready to spend up to ₹5,000 to ₹6,000 per vote in this high-stakes electoral battle.
After Komattireddy Rajagopal Reddy resigned as Congress MLA, the by-election generated so much heat that it came as a surprise to many. As the remainder of the term of whoever wins is hardly a little over one year, the keen contest with the no-holds-barred campaign for wresting the seat defied all logic for the lay voters.
The political parties accused each other of splurging money in hundreds of crores of rupees to win one Assembly seat with a truncated term.
An all-woman rally organised by the Congress party on the last day of campaigning in Munugode. (Sumit Jha/South First)
But, for the discerning voter, it is not difficult to see the elephant in the room. He knew that the outcome of Munugode will indicate which way the wind was blowing.
If a party trends in Munugode, it will continue trending till the Assembly elections next year. For TRS, it is a do-or-die situation, since KCR had already announced the rebranding of TRS as BRS and any setback in Mungode would cast a long shadow on his national ambitions.
As soon as the seat fell vacant, it was Congress that fired the first salvo. It organised a public meeting at Chandur, the headquarters of Munugode constituency, where the party’s state chief A Revanth Reddy went hammer and tongs at the TRS and the BJP.
But the party, hard up for resources and riven by factions, could not sustain the momentum for long. In fact, it was the first party to announce its candidate, Palvai Sravanthi. She is the daughter of five-time MLA and former Rajya Sabha member Palvai Govardhan Reddy who has immense goodwill in the segment.
But the actual gladiators made the entry a little late.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah flew down to the dusty constituency all the way from Delhi to infuse new strength and vitality into the veins of the party cadres and made an appeal to the voters to elect Rajagopal Reddy. He lashed out at the family rule of KCR in the state and asked the people to throw TRS out lock, stock, and barrel.
A day earlier, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao tore the BJP dispensation to pieces and how it was trying to emasculate the agriculture sector by trying to fix meters to the farm wells to make the avocation unviable so that the corporates could enter.
The Congress did not get much support from their Delhi bosses as they were engrossed in the election of a new president and Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra. The entire responsibility fell on Revanth Reddy to navigate the party through the choppy waters. The party’s internal problems became baggage too heavy for Sravanthi to carry.
Congress leader Venkat Reddy. (Supplied)
BJP nominee Rajagopal Reddy’s elder brother, who is the Congress MP from Bhongir began supporting his brother, knowing fully well that it would constitute anti-party activity.
After declaring that he would not campaign for the Congress, he left for Australia to cool his heels even as the party workers fretted and fumed, fighting the two Goliaths in the field — BJP and the TRS.
The campaigning has been very intense and at times it deteriorated to despicable levels with leaders attacking in abusive language.
The TRS accused Rajagopal Reddy of selling himself for contracts of ₹18,000 crore to help the BJP further its ambitions in the state. Though no national leader had campaigned for the BJP unlike in Huzurabad, the state leaders worked tirelessly for bolstering the party’s image.
The TRS, by virtue of being the ruling party, could power its way in reaching the voters.
Much before the notification was out, party leaders had spanned all over the constituency and began in right earnest to connect with the voters by organising community meetings, euphemistically called “atmeeya samavesalu”.
It is a fact that neither the workers nor the voters were dying of love for each other. KCR, who kicked off campaigning, also rounded it up by addressing another meeting on Sunday attended by thousands of people.
The sordid drama that unfolded in a farmhouse in Aziznagar in Hyderabad last week had sought to put the BJP on the mat.
The TRS claims that the BJP through its emissaries, who had since been caught, tried to cajole the TRS MLAs to switch sides for consideration of ₹100 crore, but the BJP calls it bunkum and hogwash.
The saffron party tried to turn the tables against the TRS, alleging that it had no moral authority to raise Cain over others’ engineering defections, as it was guilty of tempting more than 30 MLAs belonging to Opposition parties into crossing the floor and joining its ranks during TRS-I and TRS II regimes.
