Hyderabad: In the coming Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in the state, the main contenders are the Telangana Rashtra Samiti and the Congress in Telangana, and the YSRC and Telugu Desam in Seemandhra. In Telangana, the electorate is bound to support the parties that fought for the separate state, while in Seemandhra, parties that fought to keep Andhra Pradesh united will get the most support.
YSRC leaders are claiming that only their party stood behind the Seemandhra people and fought for a united state till the very end, while in Telangana, the TRS and Congress are both claiming that they are responsible for the formation of the new state. The TRS claims that it was only because of their president K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s determination to fight for Telangana that statehood was finally conceded, while the Congress claims the same for its president Sonia Gandhi.
The TD cannot claim to have fought determinedly for either state. Its vacillation and what came to be called its “two-eyed policy” on the bifurcation issue has won it no friends in either region. Many of its MLAs in the Telangana region have joined the TRS and in the Andhra region they have left to join the YSRC. The YSRC is contesting a general election for the first time, and is a formidable rival to the TD which has been the main opposition party for the past decade. The Congress and TD each has a 25 per cent share of the vote bank in the state. In the 2004 general elections, the Congress got 38.50 per cent of the votes and in the 2009 elections it got 36.53 per cent.
The difference of 1.97 per cent cost the Congress 29 Assembly seats. The TD got 37.50 per cent of the votes in the 2004 general election and won 47 assembly seats. In 2009, the TDP got 28.03 per cent of the votes and won 92 seats. Even though the TD lost 9.47 per cent of votes in 2009, it won 45 seats more than in 2004. In 2004, the TRS got 6.75 per cent of the votes and won 26 assembly seats. In 2009, it got only 3.99 per cent of the votes and won 10 assembly seats.
In the general elections in both 2004 and 2009, the Congress got the majority votes and seats, 41.54 per cent votes and 29 Lok Sabha seats in 2004 and 38.95 per cent votes and 33 seats in 2009. The TD got 33.11 per cent votes and won five seats in 2004, and in 2009 it got 24.93 per cent votes and won six seats.
In the simultaneous elections for Lok Sabha and assembly in 2004 and 2009, the Congress got more votes in the Lok Sabha than in the Assembly elections. But in both elections the TD got less percentage of votes in the Lok Sabha than in the Assembly elections. In 2004, the Congress got 38.50 per cent votes in the Assembly and in 2009, it got 36.53 per cent votes. In 2004 the TD got 37.50 per cent votes in the Assembly elections and in 2009, it got 28.08 per cent.
