The municipal election results that were declared on Saturday clearly shows that it was leadership that had either made a party successful or failed another.
There were some places where Congress was unable to win even a single seat. This shows how poorly leaders at the district-level or State-level had failed the party.
At the same time, it was the leadership of TRS that had led the party sweep the elections.
Take the case of Sangareddy and Sadashivapet municipalities. Congress legislator T. Jayaprakash Reddy has been representing the constituency. Though he had announced that District Congress Committee (DCC) president T. Nirmala Jayaprakash Reddy would be the chairperson if Congress won the elections, he had not shown much interest in campaigning.
Finance Minister T. Harish Rao and former MLA Chinta Prabhakar took the elections seriously and saw that Mr. Jayaprakash Reddy got defeated at his home turf.
Though Mr. Harish Rao was limited only to the erstwhile Medak district, he made all out efforts to see that the party won all the municipalities. Even at Narayanakhed, it was stated that the local leadership tried to back-stab local MLA M. Bhupal Reddy that had resulted in municipal elections. However, Narayanakhed municipality was sure to fall into the TRS kitty as both the MLA and MP vote had gone in favour of the ruling party.
Similarly, at Narsapur in Medak district, Congress failed to win even a single ward where former minister V. Sunitha Lakshma Reddy changed loyalties. It was alleged that Ms. Sunitha had not allowed the second rung leadership of the party to grow while the party leadership from either the district-level or State-level failed to address the issue. Similar was the case at Dubbak in Siddipet district where Congress did a big zero.
Both the communist parties failed to win even a single ward in the 15 municipalities. Surprisingly, TDP was able to win two wards at Ameenpur municipality.
It seems the Congress had reached the ground level and may have a fate similar to that of the TDP in the State unless it starts addressing the issue immediately.
