Huzurnagar may see a neck-and-neck contest

TRS, which stood a close second in last Assembly election, to give a tough fight to Congress in its stronghold

A model EVM welcomes the visitors to Huzurnagar town at the landmark Indira Chowk, leading to the town, in Suryapet district.

There is more dust in Huzurnagar than in the 11 other Assembly constituencies of the undivided Nalgonda district. Not only is the bypoll a reason for the heightened activity now, but thousands of trucks run through this town, and along the bountiful village fields, round the year.

While factories of at least a dozen cement companies and their limestone quarries define Huzurnagar, the meandering river Krishna separating Andhra Pradesh and Telangana here, blesses the fields. And rightly, the Huzurnagar division made of 77 villages in seven mandals, boasts the maximum 69,196 farmer strength in the district. Located to the south-east of Telangana, 55 km from Suryapet district headquarters, Huzurnagar is closer to mandals of Guntur in Andhra Pradesh via the Mattapalli-Tangeda bridge, at 28 km. The sleepy small town, by road, is also 15 km from Kodad, considered the gateway between the two Telugu States.

For locals, ‘Telangana culture’ is distinct here: the dialect, the mixed population and the way separate Telangana movement was conducted. And yet, everyone lives together.

Communist stronghold

It was the Communists who spearheaded the Telangana People’s Armed Struggle (1946-51), that won all the seats, including Huzurnagar, in Nalgonda in the first Assembly election in 1952. Under the People’s Democratic Front, it enjoyed an unflinching support in four polls till 1957. In the next two terms, the Congress party relegated it to the second place.

As part of the Delimitation Commission set up in 1973, Huzurnagar constituency became Kodad, and again based on 2001 Census, the 2002 Commission demarcated Huzurnagar and Kodad as separate Assembly constituencies. Both the constituencies came into being since 2009 elections. But in between and till now, two candidates — Telugu Desam Party’s V. Chander Rao and Congress’ N. Uttam Kumar Reddy — already registered hat-trick victories on both sides. And the fact that Nalgonda is a ‘Congress Fort’ is also because the latter, Congress State chief, won Huzurnagar constituency five consecutive times, the first two in the series while it was Kodad. The ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi never won an election here, including the 2014, when its candidate was Shankaramma, mother of Telangana martyr Kasoju Srikantha Chary, after the Telangana State was formed.

New entrant

However, it receives a special mention for performance in December 2018, in which newbie Shanampudi Saidireddy was a close second, securing 43.97 % vote share or 7,466 votes short of victory. The constituency returned an independent candidate, Keasara J. Reddy, only in 1972, and it never returned a woman candidate.

Huzurnagar has well-connected transportation, education till Degree programmes, a hospital, Senior Civil Judge’s Court and a sub-jail, besides the Dr. K.L. Rao Sagar Pulichintala Project with a 4x30 MW hydro-electric power generation unit.