The defeat of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi in as many as seven Lok Sabha seats has terribly upset TRS president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, who was expecting to play a kingmaker role at the Centre with 16 MP seats.
However, more than the loss of seven seats in the Lok Sabha elections, what hurt KCR more was the defeat of his own daughter Kalvakuntla Kavitha by a margin of over 70,000 votes. This was a very big shock which KCR had never expected.
In fact, Kavitha would have won the seat easily, as the TRS had secured majority in all the seven assembly seats under Nizamabad parliamentary constituency in the assembly elections held in December.
Moreover, unlike other TRS leaders, Kavitha is soft-spoken and maintained very good relationship with the people of her constituency. Adding to that, KCR’s populist schemes had a very good appeal on the electorate.
Yet, she had to face the defeat. One of the main reasons, according to sources, is the heavy cross voting from the Congress party to BJP candidate Dharmapuri Aravind. Though Congress fielded former MP Madhu Yashki Goud, he lost deposit as he got only 15,000 votes.
It means majority of the Congress voters voted for BJP candidate. Aravind happens to be the younger son of former PCC president D Srinivas, who has been virtually thrown out of the TRS after being given the Rajya Sabha seat.
DS made an attempt to come into the Congress but it did not work out, but all his followers in the Congress ensured the votes transferred to Aravind.
At the same time, Kavitha also had to face the trouble from 178 farmers who contested as independents. They, together, polled nearly one lakh votes which turned out be very crucial for her defeat!