Hyderabad:

The Congress party is still seeking its first victory since 1998 in the Medak constituency, once represented by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

The BJP won the seat in 1999, but it has been a bastion of the TRS (now BRS) since 2004.

This time, the constituency will be in a close triangular contest with the Congress, which is determined to regain lost ground. The party is confident of wresting power from the BRS after capturing power in the state in the recent elections.

For the first time in a decade, the BRS looks relatively weak after losing power and several key leaders defected to the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata Party, but the BRS continues to maintain its grip on Meda, the hometown of party supremo and former chief minister K Gram’s control. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR).

The BJP is also keen to repeat its performance in 1999 when A. Narendra was elected. He later switched his allegiance to BRS and was re-elected as BRS in 2004.

In 2019, Kotha Prabhakar Reddy retained her seat by defeating Congress MP Gali Anil Kumar with an absolute majority of over 3.16 lakh votes. The BJP’s M. Raghunandan Rao was a distant third.

Raghunandan Rao lost the 2018 elections from Dubbak, one of the assembly constituencies under Medak, and won the 2020 Dubbak by-election. In fact, his narrow victory over BRS candidate Solipeta Sujatha Reddy by 1,079 votes marked the beginning of Raghunandan Rao’s popularity among the people of India The rise of the party in Telangana politics.

However, Raghunandan Rao failed to retain his seat in the recent assembly elections. Prabhakar Reddy, who shifted from the Assembly seat, defeated him with a majority of over 53,000 votes.

The saffron party has once again fielded lawyer Raghunandan Rao from the Medak Lok Sabha seat.

In the assembly elections held on November 30, 2023, the BRS won six out of the seven assembly constituencies in the Medak Assembly constituency. These include Gajwel, who is retained by KCR.

Another key constituency retained by the BRS is Siddipet, which has been the stronghold of the KCR family since 1985. In the recent polls, KCR’s nephew and former minister T. Harish Rao won Siddipet for the seventh consecutive time, surpassing KCR’s six wins.

The only parliamentary seat won by the Congress was Medak. This is the first victory for this great old party in this area since 1989. The party hopes to repeat the performance in Medak Assembly constituency.

The Congress party nominated 41-year-old Neelam Madhu Mudiraj as its candidate, while the BRS nominated MLC P. Venkatram Reddy as its nominee.

Neelam Madhu started his political career in BRS. He became the village chief of Chitkul village, his hometown in Patancheru Assembly constituency.

Neelam Madhu quit the BRS ahead of the recent assembly elections and joined the Congress. Congress also declared him as the party candidate from Patancheru. However, the party changed its candidate after protests from followers of the ambitious K. Srinivas Goud. Angered by this, Neelam Madhu contested the election as a BSP candidate and finished third with over 46,000 votes. This resulted in Congress candidate Srinivas Goud losing to BRS candidate Mahipal Reddy by a margin of 7,091 votes.

Indira Gandhi was elected from Medak in 1980 with a margin of over three hundred thousand votes and represented the constituency until her assassination in 1984.

The Telugu Desam Party (TDP), founded by legendary actor-turned-politician NT Rama Rao, wrested the seat from the Congress in 1984.

Until 1998, Medak was a Congress bastion. Senior leader M. Baga Reddy was the last MP elected from here. He was elected to four consecutive terms in 1989, 1991, 1996 and 1998.

After KCR brought up TRS in 2001 to revive the Telangana statehood movement, Medak became his stronghold.

In 2014, when the Assembly and Lok Sabha polls were held simultaneously, KCR won the election from Medak and Gajvir but gave up the Lok Sabha seat to become the state’s first chief minister.

Subsequently, TRS’s Kotha Prabhakar Reddy won the Medak seat with a margin of 3,61,277 votes.

It’s a battle for KCR’s reputation in the face of one of the worst crises since the launch of TRS.

BRS P. Venkata Rami Reddy is a former Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer.

As District Collector of Siddipet, he touched the feet of then Chief Minister KCR during the inauguration of the new district collector’s building in June 2021, sparking a row. In the same year, he quit his job and joined BRS. He was subsequently nominated as a member of the Legislative Council.

BRS is seeking votes by positioning itself as the only party capable of protecting Telangana’s interests.

Raghunandan Rao is banking on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity.

Medak has more than 1.6 million voters. The majority of the population in this constituency relies on agriculture for their livelihood.

Public sector industries such as BHEL, BDL, Ordnance Factory and IIT-Hyderabad are located on the fringes of Hyderabad and fall under the Medak constituency.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)