HYDERABAD: After a long wait of five months, the stage is set for voting on Saturday in the crucial Huzurabad Assembly byelection, whose outcome could change the course of state politics and which is being considered as the testing ground for Assembly polls due in December 2023.
Although 30 candidates remain in the fray, the main contest is between the TRS and the opposition BJP. The polling will be held for 12 hours from 7 am to 7 pm, the polling time having been extended to make up for delays caused by Covid-19 prevention guidelines.
Although the state has witnessed three bypolls after the December 2018 elections, none of them attracted as much attention as the Huzurabad bypoll which was necessitated by the resignation of a Etala Rajendar, who was sacked from the Cabinet following a rift with TRS president and Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao. Rajendar was charged with land encroachment, He later quit the TRS and the Assembly and joined the BJP in June.
The bypoll in Huzurnagar in October 2019 was necessitated by the resignation of Congress MLA N. Uttam Kumar Reddy after his election to the Lok Sabha from Nalgonda in May 2019. The bypolls in Dubbak and Nagarjunasagar came following the death of TRS MLAs Solipeta Ramalinga Reddy and Nomula Narasimhaiah.
Rajendar, a six-term MLA, is taking on TRS candidate Gellu Srinivas Yadav, a debutant, in the bypoll. It is, however, being seen as a battle between Chandrashekar Rao and Rajendar.
Both the TRS and the BJP were engaged in a bitter war of words during the campaign since June.
The Chief Minister deputed ministers, party MLAs, MLCs and senior leaders in Huzurabad for months to take on Rajendar. He sanctioned several thousands of crores of rupees to Huzurabad for development works of which Dalit Bandhu alone accounted for Rs 2,000 crore.
As this bypoll came as per his wish unlike other bypolls, the Chief Minister is taking this election as a ‘do-or-die’ battle and wants to win the election at any cost to silence voices of dissent in the TRS if any and send a message to his partymen that any leader in the TRS, despite how big he is, cannot survive politically if he crosses the line.
The Election Commission of India (EC) has made elaborate arrangements for the polling. As many as 2,37,036 voters will exercise their franchise, of them 1,17,933 men and 1,19,102 women.
