Amid religious polarisation, BJP repeats its win in Adilabad seat comfortably

Adilabad: In what turned out to be an expected result, the BJP has retained Adilabad (ST) Lok Sabha constituency in Telangana. In a triangular contest, the BJP candidate Godam Nagesh defeated Congress’ Athram Suguna by a comfortable margin of 90,652 votes.

Banking on the support of Hindu voters

The election for Adilabad Parliamentary Constituency (PC) will go down in history for having been fought on the strength of ‘polarisation’ of different segments of voters. The BJP had depended on the support of Hindu voters riding high as it was on the Ayodhya Ram temple wave and the Congress camp seemed to be only wooing Muslim, SC and ST voters.

The BJP was projected as a winner much before the start of the electoral process as the party held four of the seven Assembly segments which make up the Parliamentary constituency. In the remaining three segments, BRS (Bharat Rashtra Samithi) has MLAs in two and Congress in one, all three being reserved for Scheduled Tribes.

The winner got 5,68,168 votes of the total 12,21,553 votes polled while the defeated Congress candidate got 4,77,516 votes. The BRS candidate Athram Sakku polled 1,37,300 votes to end up a distant third, raising a question mark on the relevance or irrelevance of a regional party in elections to Lok Sabha.

Godam Nagesh political progression

Nagesh returns as the MP from this Parliamentary constituency having defeated a Congress candidate for the second time in his political career. Earlier, he had won the 2014 election on a TRS (now BRS) ticket defeating Congress nominee Naresh Jadhav by a margin of 1,71,290 votes.

The Congress’ strategy in Adilabad (PC) apparently failed to yield positive results. The move in fact was seen to have spurred the ‘secular’ Hindu voters, especially those belonging to BRS from the backward and economically middle-class sections, to migrate to the BJP camp.

Congress failed to woo Marathi voters

The Congress had actually mounted a spirited campaign with Danasari Anusuya Seethakka, the in-charge minister of erstwhile united Adilabad district in Telangana Cabinet, herself taking care of the nitty gritty. Suguna also had the support of the left ecosystem whose luminaries campaigned in different parts of the constituency.

The party failed in wooing Marathi-speaking voters too who constitute a fairly sizable chunk within over 16.5 lakh electorate in the Lok Sabha constituency. This chunk of voters had already made up its mind to back the BJP long before the Parliamentary elections were on the horizon.

Split among Adivasi voters helped Congress

The Adivasi voters, especially the Gond tribe voters were apparently split three ways benefitting Nagesh and negatively impacting the chances of the Congress candidate.

The Gond voters make up an estimated 1.7 lakhs of the total tribal electorate of about 3.7 lakhs which also includes other minority hill tribes as well as the Lambada plains tribe.