The just concluded gram panchayat elections in Telangana have once again exposed how the media is polarised on party lines, as they gave conflicting reports about the political affinity of the elected sarpanches and ward members.
The panchayat elections are held on non-party basis and no candidate will fight the elections on party symbols. Yet, at the grassroot level, the political affiliation of the candidates is quite evident.
The present panchayat elections reflected the battle between two major political parties – the Congress and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS).
Needless to say, the ruling party always have an advantage in the local body elections. Yet, the BRS claimed that it has made significant gains in the sarpanch elections.
The media houses affiliated to the Congress and the BRS have attempted to attribute victories to their respective camps, often without formal declarations of support.
There is no official mechanism to establish which candidate was backed by which party, either individually or collectively, making most such claims speculative.
As the election results are being announced, media organisations, depending on their political alignment, have drawn up “scoreboards” to suit their narratives.
According to this view, the absence of official party-wise data has allowed television channels and newspapers to arbitrarily inflate numbers, declare moral victories, and prematurely project political dominance.
For example, BRS-backed T News sough to exaggerate the results to show that the BRS made significant gains in the panchayat elections.
While Telangana witnessed elections to 12,727 gram panchayats across three phases, the T-News channel sought to juggle the figures to show that the BRS won huge number of seats.
However, the cumulative tally shown by the channel for BRS, Congress, BJP and “others” reportedly added up to 14,384 seats, far exceeding the total number of panchayats contested.
This is a case of “self-created scoreboards and imaginary numbers”, accusing the channel of manufacturing an inflated picture of BRS performance.
The BRS-aligned newspaper Namasthe Telangana projected a slightly lower figures and maintaining more realistic totals.
A comparison across major Telugu news channels shows that the BRS had won between 3,300 and 3,500 seats, roughly half of the Congress tally.
Interestingly, even Sakshi, widely regarded as sympathetic to BRS, reportedly credited the Congress with over 7,000 seats, contradicting the figures aired by T News.
Among print media, Eenadu projected 7,010 seats for Congress, nearly double the number attributed to BRS.
Andhra Jyothy, often seen as supportive of Congress leader Revanth Reddy, published similar figures, while separately listing CPI and CPM seats, though their role in these elections was widely considered marginal.
The Congress-leaning daily Velugu went a step further, crediting the party with 7,793 seats, though it reportedly ensured that the overall tally did not exceed the total number of panchayats.
The episode has reinforced criticism that in the absence of official party-wise data, media houses are free to publish numbers that suit their political preferences.
Analysts say this trend risks misleading the public and eroding trust in election reporting.