What KCR Did That Night?

A strong Congress wave gripped Telangana in this year’s election as the party was voted to power in a comprehensive manner. But unexpectedly, one of the senior leaders in the party Jagga Reddy couldn’t cash in on this Congress wave as he couldn’t win from Sangareddy constituency. He has now done a postmortem of the electoral trends in Sanga Reddy and he has a very striking statement.

“As per the information that I got, KCR got final report from Telangana Intelligence department on 28th November and it said Congress was winning 80-82 seats in Telangana. KCR then changed his design for electioneering on 29 and 30 November. He focused on 15-20 MLA seats that he believed Congress would win. The seats include Sangareddy, Zaheerabad and Patancheruvu. He then directed his party to disburse 25-30 crores rupees to BRS leaders in each of these constituencies. They gave 2000, 3000, and even 5000 rupees per vote. That’s how BRS won many of these seats in the last minute.” Jagga Reddy said.

Reddy went on to claim that he had strong survey reports on 28 November that Sanga Reddy is a sure shot seat for him and he would win by 16,000 votes majority. He claimed that in just one night, the entire dynamic changed with the surge of money by BRS where they bought out the voters with 25-30 crores in each of the 15-20 constituency. He suspected that KCR intentionally splashed money in these constituencies on 29 November and also the day of polling, 30 November.

Jagga Reddy lost the election in Sangareddy by nearly 9000 votes. He is now suspecting that KCR changed the scenario in one night. This comment from a senior politician like Jagga Reddy certainly has some weightage.