Telangana panchayat polls a clear mandate for Cong after 2 years in office: Reddy

The outcome of Telangana’s recently concluded gram panchayat elections has reinforced the ruling Congress’s claim of sustained popular support, with modest gains for the erstwhile ruling BRS.

Held in three phases on 11, 14 and 17 December, the rural local body polls covered 12,702 gram panchayats and were conducted on a non-party basis, using ballot papers rather than EVMs. According to the Telangana State Election Commission (SEC), the elections recorded an unusually high voter turnout of 85.30 per cent, with over 1.66 crore eligible voters — including more than 85 lakh women — casting their ballots for around 12,700 sarpanch posts and nearly 1.12 lakh ward member positions.

Chief minister Revanth Reddy said Congress-backed candidates won 7,527 gram panchayats outright, with another 808 villages going to Congress rebels, taking the party’s effective tally to 8,335 panchayats — roughly 66 per cent of those where elections were held.

The opposition Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and the BJP, which Reddy claimed functioned as an informal alliance, together won 4,221 panchayats, or about a third of the total.

Revanth Reddy cited the results as further evidence that public support for his government has remained consistent since the party came to power in the 2023 Assembly elections. "Whether it is urban or rural, in the prestigious polls held over the last two years, people have supported our government," the chief minister said, addressing a press conference in Hyderabad.

He pointed to subsequent victories in two Assembly bypolls and the party’s performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections — where Congress won eight of Telangana’s 17 seats — to argue that the gram panchayat verdict was part of a continuing trend rather than an isolated endorsement.

Importantly, these polls were held amid administrative and legal constraints. Owing to pending litigation over the state government’s proposal to provide 42 per cent reservation to backward classes in local bodies, elections were conducted only for gram panchayats, with polls to higher-tier rural bodies such as Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituencies (ZPTCs) deferred. Despite this truncated framework, voter participation remained high, suggesting strong grassroots engagement.

Though formally non-party, the elections were widely viewed as a proxy contest between the Congress, the BRS and the BJP. Political observers say the results underline the Congress’s continued dominance in rural Telangana, even as they caution against reading them as total political hegemony.

“Congress-backed candidates securing a majority of sarpanch posts across all phases confirms that the 2023 Assembly verdict was not a one-off,” said C.R. Sukumar, senior journalist-turned-advocate. “At the same time, setbacks for some local Congress heavyweights and the space retained by non-Congress forces indicate that the dominance is broad, not absolute.”

The BRS, which has suffered a series of reversals since losing power in 2023 — including drawing a blank in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections and failing to retain the Jubilee Hills Assembly seat in a recent bypoll — has sought to frame the gram panchayat outcome differently.

BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao claimed the rural polls marked the beginning of Congress’s decline, arguing that his party retained a substantial rural foothold despite what he described as the ruling party’s misuse of power.

Analysts broadly agree that while the BRS is no longer the dominant force it once was, the gram panchayat results show it remains organisationally relevant in several rural pockets. This, they argue, gives it room to regroup — particularly if anti-incumbency against the Congress begins to consolidate over time.

The BJP, by contrast, appears to have gained little traction from the rural exercise. Despite projecting itself nationally as a principal challenger to the Congress, the party’s tally in Telangana’s gram panchayat polls remained in low single-digit percentage terms. Observers link this performance to the BJP’s limited organisational depth in rural Telangana, a weakness also exposed in the Jubilee Hills by-election where the party forfeited its deposit.

“The BJP’s results expose the gap between rhetoric and reality,” Sukumar said. “Claims of emerging as Telangana’s main alternative have not translated into grassroots penetration.”

Another political analyst, Telakapalli Ravi, summed up the picture succinctly: “Congress has consolidated, BRS has survived, and the BJP has largely remained a marginal player.”

With PTI inputs