Lok Sabha Polls: Karimnagar’s transformation from left-extremist stronghold to nationalist bastion

Karimnagar: Only time will tell if Karimnagar Lok Sabha constituency’s alliance with right-wing politics gets extended for another term or if the voters will side with other options. In these three-cornered issue-less elections, political parties are seeking to influence voters mainly through respective political ideologies.

Strong socialist grounding

Voters in this economically strong Parliamentary seat have had their tryst with socialist philosophy immediately after independence when candidates of the Scheduled Castes Federation and the People’s Democratic Front, the liberal politics of the Congress and the strong region-based politics of the Telangana Praja Samithi variety and later the TRS (now BRS). The TDP squeezed itself in between in 1996 when its candidate won.

Influence of left-wing extremism

A noteworthy factor of all elections held here since the late 1970s is that they had been under the cloud of left-wing extremism. Erstwhile unified Karimnagar district was a hotbed of Naxalism and a plethora of factions of the underground armed squads had roamed the place right until the middle of the last decade.

The influence of left-wing extremism in the constituency is a thing of the past. The proof is the penetration of the right-wing BJP in the rural areas where the Naxalite factions had once held sway.

BJP’s rise in Karimnagar

It was quite remarkable that the BJP had won the seat in the 1998 and 1999 elections. Two decades later, in the 2019 elections, Bandi Sanjay Kumar of the saffron party once again captured the seat defeating TRS party’s B Vinod Kumar.

The latter has been fielded by his party in these elections too against the incumbent Sanjay Kumar and the Congress party’s Velichala Rajender Rao. The elections, therefore, are poised to see a spirited campaign by the three frontline parties.

Congress candidates

The Congress party candidate, who is a contractor, had unsuccessfully contested the 2009 General Elections as a nominee of film star Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam Party. He is now being strongly supported by minister Ponnam Prabhakar, who represents his party in the Legislature Assembly from the Husnabad segment.

Erstwhile Karimnagar was divided into five districts in 2016 when the then TRS government re-organised districts in Telangana. The Karimnagar Lok Sabha constituency now encompasses five Assembly segments: Karimnagar, Choppadandi (SC), Manakondur (SC), Huzurabad (Karimnagar district), Vemulawada, Sircilla (Sircilla-Rajanna district) and Husnabad (Siddipet district).

In the 2023 Assembly elections, the Congress candidates won from Choppadandi, Vemulawada, Manakondur and Husnabad while the BRS won Karimnagar, Sircilla – where BRS working president KT Rama Rao won – and Huzurabad. The equation does suggest that the BRS is the weaker of the two and the BJP has no representation at all but the ground reality could be different from this.

An overview

The constituency has an electorate of about 17,91,970 voters of which 9,16,820 are female voters and 8,75,048 are male voters. According to independent estimates, the electorate comprises of about 10 to 12 per cent of minority voters.

One of the key factors that influence the outcome of elections to the Karimnagar Parliamentary constituency, or for that matter in Assembly or local body elections, is the presence of strong cooperative societies. These cooperative societies have a large section of women voters as members and political parties woo them to garner their votes.