Telangana was the only state among the five where results of assembly polls were declared on Tuesday that the Congress had cobbled together a coalition amid the talk of formation of a broad-based alliance to take on the BJP-led NDA in the Lok Sabha polls next year. Earlier on Tuesday, PM Narendra Modi also took to Twitter to express his congratulations to KCR “for the thumping win in Telangana.”
In the state, the Congress had just 19 seats in its kitty, two less than what it won in the last polls, while the TDP could win only two against its tally of 15 seats in 2014. The two other coalition partners failed to open their account. The BJP, which had won five seats in the last assembly polls in 2014 held in undivided Andhra Pradesh that it contested in alliance with the TDP, had to be content with just one seat out of the 118 where its candidates tried their luck. Its state chief and sitting MLA K Laxman finished a poor third in Musheerabad.
Though Telangana came into existence more than four years ago, TRS supremo brought alive the issue of Telangana pride by repeatedly targeting his former boss and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, accusing him of stalling the development of Telangana and calling him an outsider. His appeal to regional sentiments appeared to have helped the TRS keep the Congress, which made huge gains in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, under check in Telangana as it had aligned with the TDP, a party Rao accused of acting against his state’s interests.