NEW DELHI
The Bharatiya Janata Party in Telangana is making all-out efforts in around 30 Assembly seats, which, according to analysts, can disturb the calculations of the state’s ruling party BRS and main opposition Congress in the Assembly elections. The seats that the BJP loses out of these 30, can go either way, towards BRS or the Congress. The state has 119 Assembly seats.
There are a dozen seats which the BJP considers to be Category A. Political observers assess that if Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM retains the 7 seats it has in the Telangana Assembly—from the Old City of Hyderabad, where it has an iron grip—and if these seats are added to BJP’s probable win of around 12 seats, then the Congress and BRS will be left with the remaining 100 seats, where they will have a bipolar contest. Out of this 100, an analyst said that “the BJP could play a spoilsport on more than 15 seats” by cutting into both parties’ votes.
Syed Amin-ul-Hasan Jafri, an ex-MLC with AIMIM and journalist, told The Sunday Guardian, “If there is a neck-to-neck fight between Congress and BRS, it may mean that BRS’ vote share will drop from around 47% to the level of the Congress’, which had polled around 28% in 2018. Let’s assume Congress and BRS polling around 40% each, that scenario does not seem to be happening. The fight doesn’t seem to be happening like that. The Congress has 40 seats as Category C (where the party doesn’t have any hope of winning); so how would they be able to make it a competitive contest? So, it doesn’t seem a neck-to-neck fight. If we assume the Congress losing those 40 seats, then there are 79 seats left (out of Telangana’s 119), all of which they will not win; there are BJP’s and AIMIM’s shares as well in those 79 seats.”
In addition to that, what is seen to be playing in favour of the BJP is its decision to field three of its four sitting MPs in the Assembly elections. This will not only help the party gain more vote share in the respective Assembly seats, but also disturb the equilibrium of Congress and BRS assessments. For example, Dharmapuri Arvind, who is MP from Nizamabad, is contesting from Koratla, which is one of the Assembly seats in his Lok Sabha constituency. His presence is having a positive impact on the other six seats, like Jagtial and Nizamabad Urban. Something similar is happening with Karimnagar BJP MP Bandi Sanjay, who is contesting from Karimnagar Assembly seat.
Moreover, the BJP is contesting, according to analysts, with a focus on the Lok Sabha elections. The last time, in the 2018 Assembly elections, the BJP polled around 7% votes, which went up to around 20% in the Lok Sabha elections where they won four seats. A political analyst said, “Even if they gain low dividends in the Assembly elections, they will make it a point to make noise in general elections and retain the seats.”
A political observer said, “A lot of noise is being made about a Congress wave. But if we see the 2018 Assembly elections, when there was an alliance between the TDP and Congress, they were saying that with the TDP and Congress coming together, they would cross 50% votes and get two-thirds majority or beyond that. But ultimately, Congress and TDP together got only 21 seats. While the TRS raised its tally from 63 to 88.”