Telangana to see 'tie-breaker' bypoll before Assembly elections next year

Telangana will witness yet another bypoll, this one a sort of semi-final before the Assembly elections next year.

The Munugode contest would also serve as a tie-breaker as far as Assembly bypolls are concerned in the state. The ruling TRS and the Opposition BJP won two each of the four such polls held since the last Assembly elections in December 2018.

Congress MLA Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy, who quit his party last week, has on Monday resigned as the Munugodu legislator. Telangana Assembly speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy, whom Rajagopal met and handed the letter, promptly accepted the resignation. The development was also communicated to the Election Commission of India.

The bypoll is expected to be held along with the Gujarat Assembly polls later this year.

Rajagopal, one of the senior leaders, has been miffed with the party especially since Revanth Reddy was made the pradesh committee chief. Even as he continued in the Congress, his statements eulogizing Narendra Modi – Amit Shah leadership embarrassed the high command.

The former Lok Sabha MP is set to join the BJP formally later this month even as speculation is rife that Rajagopal's elder brother, sitting Congress MP from Bhongir, Komatireddy Venkat Reddy could follow his brother into the BJP – sooner or later. Venkat, who is Congress's star campaigner in Telangana, had met Shah last week.

The Komatireddy brothers have a strong hold over Nalgonda, a region where the BJP is considered weak.

By taking Rajagopal into its fold first and inevitably making him the bypoll candidate, the BJP wants to repeat the Huzurabad success now in Munugode. And then utilise the Komatireddy clout to expand its presence in south east Telangana, for the Assembly and general elections.

The state saw four Assembly by-elections till now in the present Assembly term – Huzurnagar (2019), Dubbaka (2020), Nagarjunasagar and Huzurabad (2021).

The Congress lost Huzurnagar to TRS, and TRS managed to retain Nagarjunasagar. But the K Chandrasekhar Rao-headed party lost two of its seats – Dubbaka and Huzurabad – to the BJP.

While Dubbaka, Nagarjunasagar polls were necessitated by the demise of sitting MLAs, in Huzurnagar sitting MLA Uttam Kumar Reddy resigned after being elected to the Lok Sabha. In Huzurabad, senior TRS leader and former health minister Eatala Rajender resigned, after a fallout with KCR. The TRS government had charged Eatala with land grabbing.

The BJP utilised the opportunity, made Eatala its candidate, and could win Huzurabad mainly because of the four-time MLA's strong connection with the constituency. The BJP is applying the same formula now with Rajagopal in Munugode.