2019 election results: TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao’s daughter unseated in Nizamabad
Kavitha Kalvakuntla lost to Arvind Dharmapuri of the Bharatiya Janata Party by 70,875 votes.
Telangana Rashtra Samithi President and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s
daughter Kavitha Kalvakuntla lost the Lok Sabha election from Nizamabad to Arvind Dharmapuri of the Bharatiya Janata Party by 70,875 votes as the saffron party made inroads into the state. Dharmapuri is the son of former TRS leader D Srinivas.
Kalvakuntla, who won the election in 2014 with a massive margin of 1.67 lakh votes, thanked the electrorate and congratulated Dharmapuri on his victory. “Win or lose, my life is dedicated to public,” she added. “I fought hard during Telangana agitation and as an MP worked sincerely for my constituency and will continue to fight for people of Nizamabad.”
Apart from Dharmapuri and senior Congress leader Madhu Yashki, 174 turmeric farmers were also in the fray in Nizamabad to highlight the agrarian crisis. Kalvakuntla had promised to set up a national turmeric board but could not deliver on her promise, The News Minute reported. Though the TRS leader denied the farmers in the fray would affect her electoral prospects, close to one lakh votes were polled by the 182 candidates from the BJP, the Congress and the TRS, indicating that the farmers might have damaged her chances of getting re-elected.
Win or lose, My life is dedicated to public.
— Kavitha Kalvakuntla (@RaoKavitha) May 23, 2019
I fought hard during T-agitation & as an MP worked sincerely for my constituency & will continue to fight for people of Nizamabad.
The BJP won three more seats – Adilabad, Karimnagar and Secunderabad – with a vote share of 19.45%. These three candidates won with margins of more than 50,000 votes. Secunderabad was the only constituency held by the BJP in 2014.
The BJP seemed to have established its presence in the urban pockets of Adilabad, Karimnagar and Nizamabad, and polarised voters in the Muslim-majority areas in the state. Bhainsa in Adilabad, Bodhan in Nizamabad and Nirmal in Karimnagar are communally-sensitive areas that have witnessed communal violence in recent times.
“When it comes to national politics, people choose parties that have more chances of a forming a stable government,” political analyst Palwai Raghavendra Reddy told The News Minute. “The ‘there is no alternative’ factor has surely helped BJP in winning seats this time.”