Telangana: Congress claims ‘moral victory’ in Khammam loss

HYDERABAD: Though the Congress lost the Khammam MLC seat, party leaders said cross voting took place with disgruntled TRS local representatives giving their preference vote to Congress candidate R Nageswara Rao.
The Congress had only 98 votes on its side but polled 242 votes which meant that a large number of TRS local elected representatives could have given their vote to Nageswara Rao.The ruling party shifted its voters to a camp at an undisclosed location and brought them back only on the polling day on December 10 to avoid poaching.
TRS candidate T Madhusudhan won the MLC seat with 482 votes followed by Nageswara Rao getting 242. Two independent candidates Kondapalli Srinivas Rao polled four votes while Kondru Sudha Rani scored a duck.
“This is a moral victory for the Congress as the cross voting has reflected the growing discontent against the TRS government even among the local elected representatives of the ruling party,” said Nageswara Rao.
The Congress leader said people should realise the true colours of the CPI and CPM which claim to be fighting against the TRS and the BJP governments in the state and at the Centre respectively. “While the CPI discreetly supported and its elected representatives voted for the ruling TRS, the CPM stayed away from polling which indirectly helped the TRS,” Nageswara Rao said.
However, the talk in political circles is that while the CPI mainly supported the TRS, some of its local elected representatives in Wyra, Sathupalli, Kothagudem and Bhadradri voted in favour of the Congress as per ‘local understanding’. The CPM’s decision not to participate in the polling was being viewed as a strategy to indirectly help the TRS. The TDP had eight votes and most of it were polled by the Congress candidate.
Congress Khammam town president Mohammed Javed said that they were able to prevent poaching of Congress voters by the TRS and would have won had the party been allowed to meet and explain the failures of TRS government to the elected representatives of the ruling party.