BJP on tenterhooks in Telangana to retain its lone seat

The BJP faces a tough challenge in retaining its lone seat in Telangana after a dismal performance in the recent assembly polls, but the saffron party has pinned its hopes on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's charisma and its leaders say they are confident of pulling off victory.

The Secunderabad Lok Sabha constituency, where the BJP had 33.62 per cent vote share in 2014, has become a crucial battleground for all three main parties -- the BJP, the Congress and the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS).

Trying to ensure that each vote counts, the prime minister and the BJP president Amit Shah will both be holding rallies from Friday onwards to bolster the party's prospects in a state it was hoping will be its gateway to South India.

Leaving nothing to chance, the BJP has dropped former Union minister and sitting MP Bandaru Dattatreya and replaced him with G Kishan Reddy -- former BJP state president and three time MLA -- in a bid to retain the treasured seat at all cost.

Dattatreya has been contesting from the constituency since 1991 but faced consecutive defeats in the 2004 and 2009 elections. In 2014, he won with a massive majority of 2,54,735 votes against rival Congress. He was given the portfolio of Union Minister of State for Labour and Employment but was removed as minister in September 2017.

Kishan Reddy -- considered an outsider in this constituency -- was defeated from the Amberpet assembly segment in 2018 by a TRS candidate by a small margin.

Admitting that he is under pressure to win the lone BJP seat, Reddy exuded confidence that the BJP's gambit will pay off.

"I am a three-time MLA. I am ready to take this challenge. People are looking at this election differently from the 2018 Vidhan Sabha polls. This election is not to elect a chief minister but a PM of this country. If TRS wins, it will not benefit as the PM will not be made from a regional party," Reddy told PTI in the midst of his busy rally.

He added that Modi's rallies will bring in voter confidence and improve the party's winning prospects.

Unwilling to let the BJP's plan succeed, the TRS, which won six of seven assembly segments in the Lok Sabha constituency in 2018, has fielded the state's youngest candidate.

State minister T Srinivas Yadav's son Sai Kiran Yadav is just 32 years old and is ready to take on the BJP and the Congress with the help of friendly party AIMIM that won the seventh assembly seat in this Parliamentary constituency.

Claiming that Modi's charisma is on the wane, Sai Kiran Yadav is appealing to people in the constituency to vote for a regional party that can play a key role in forming a non-BJP, non-Congress government at the Centre
Ask why should people vote for TRS, he said, "We were insulted by the Union government that sacked outgoing MP Dattatreya as a central minister. It shows BJP does not want any representation from the state. People want to take revenge this time and vote for the TRS."