From 0 To 100, TRS Has High Hopes For Hyderabad Civic Polls

Hyderabad: In the first Hyderabad municipal elections since Telangana achieved statehood, ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi is confident of a quantum jump: from zero to a 100 seats in the 150-member house.

This was the promise of KT Rama Rao, who led the party's campaign, to his father, Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhara Rao.

The campaign has been led on the other side too by the Gen-Next - Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu's son Lokesh - and in the run-up to the polls there have been acrimonious exchanges on social media between the two.  

Hyderabad, the capital of Andhra Pradesh before the bifurcation, will remain the joint capital of the two states for a decade after the bifurcation. Of the 15 assembly seats in Hyderabad, the TRS won 2 and the TDP 2. Of the rest, 7 seats were won by AIMIM, none by the Congress and four by the BJP.

Though the elections are yet to be held, the Telangana chief minister, locally known as KCR, has fondly announced a reward for his son: The IT and panchayat raj minister will be given additional charge of municipal administration and urban development. While making the announcement on Saturday, KCR said, "He now knows every lane of Hyderabad and all its problems''.

KCR even taunted arch-rival Mr Naidu, saying as the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, he should worry about sweeping the streets of his new capital Amaravati and not Hyderabad.

Mr Naidu and his son insist that it is they who built Brand Hyderabad. His party's general secretary Nara Lokesh has retorted saying KCR has been sleeping like the mythical Kumbakaran and that is why Telangana did not get a smart city tag. ''Everything from Gandhi hospital to Hitech City has been built by Chandrababu Naidu,'' he said.

The Congress, which got the maximum number of 52 seats in 2009, is hoping to change its fortunes from the drubbing they got in the Lok Sabha elections.

The BJP meanwhile, has suffered a setback after its tallest leader in Telangana, Bandaru Dattatreya, was named in the police case involving the recent suicide of Rohith Vemula, the PhD scholar in Hyderabad university.