TRS loses its first ever by-election in Telangana. What does this loss mean to the party?

Government may stop acting so confident. Party may have to take on BJP instead of Congress.

Ever since Telangana was formed in 2014, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) has always had a majority of seats in the legislative assembly.

In the first assembly election, the party won 63 out of the total 119 seats. In the next election in 2018, it won 86 seats. Politicians keep defecting to the ruling party. This happens even more in the Telugu states. So soon after the 2018 elections, TRS increased its strength to 103.

What's more, the party had won every single by-election in the state. The Dubbak by-election on 10th November is the very first one in Telangana that TRS has lost.

Initially, the party was seen as a strong efficient party in the state. After all, it was the party which had fought for the creation of Telangana. However, the party leader and chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) grew more and more confident. For example when there was a full lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, KCR instructed the officials to "Shoot at sight," if anyone broke the lockdown rules.

In the beginning of May, there were very few confirmed cases in the state. The state had an average of just 31 cases. However, the state was conducting just around 530 tests a day. Neighbouring Andhra Pradesh was conducting 7,500 tests a day. The government claimed that it was conducting fewer tests because it was very efficient at tracing people. So they didn't need to 'waste' test-kits unnecessarily testing more people.

Those who had faith in the government would have found it really good in governance. However, such governance has to be done very carefully. It is likely that many people didn't have so much faith in the government. These people would have now found it dictatorial and just pretending to do good.

It is likely that that is why they voted against the government.

How did BJP win the by-election?

In the 2014 assembly elections, BJP won just 5 seats. In 2018, they won just a single seat! Congress had been the main alternative to TRS winning 19 seats in 2018.

However, BJP won 4 seats in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections which was more than Congress. The party doesn't have powerful local leaders, but the BJP led central government does have some support. In the local body elections held later, BJP again did very badly. There had been a by-election earlier where most of the anti-TRS votes went to Congress. However TRS won.

In this Dubbak by-election, BJP gave the impression that though Congress comes second in the elections, they are incapable of winning. This message was at its peak on the day of voting, when they released a fake video which misled the voters. This is how they won.

Now TRS may need to change its strategy. Till now, they have been on friendly terms with BJP at the centre. As long as they were against the state unit of Congress, they were safe. But now TRS may have to distance itself from BJP since it has to fight with it in the state.