The Telangana Rashtra Samiti, fighting for the formation of Telangana state, suffered a debilitating blow as it lost half of its seats in Lok Sabha and the state assembly to the rival ruling Congress party and opposition Telugu Desam. While the TRS had to struggle hard to retain two Lok Sabha and seven assembly seats, the Congress and the TDP shared one Lok Sabha seat each. Congress won 6 assembly seats and the TDP bagged five assembly seats. The BJP drew a blank. The votes in the by-elections to 18 assembly and 4 Lok Sabha seats were polled on Thursday and results were announced Sunday. The TRS was particularly hit hard by the debacle as it had come hardly a year before the general elections are due in the state. In a clear indication of the erosion in the TRS base, its president K. Chandrasekhara Rao could romp home in Karimnagar Lok Sabha constituency with a narrow margin of 15289 votes, a huge fall from his margin of more than two lakh votes in the same constituency in 2006. The Congress candidate and former minister T. Jeevan Redddy gave a tough fight to KCR and came close to defeating him. Since 2004 this was the third time they had clashed in Karimnagar constituency. After wining in 2004, KCR had resigned in 2006 and fought a by-election and this time it was his third election in four years and apparently the people did not like it. Another TRS MP, Vinod Kumar retained the Hanmakonda Lok Sabha seat with a margin of around 15,000 votes. TDP wrested Warangal seat, where its candidate E. Dayakr Rao won with a margin of more than four thousand votes against Ravindra Nayak of the TRS. In Adilabad Lok Sabha constituency TRS was reduced to third position as A Indirakiran Reddy wrested the seat with a margin of more than 22,000 votes. Venugopala Chary of TDP came second and sitting MP Madhusudhan Reddy came third. The by elections to the 4 Lok Sabha and 16 assembly seats were caused by the mass resignation of TRS members in March last in protest against the failure of UPA government in formation of Telangana state. The other two assembly seats – Khairatabad and Therlam had fallen vacant because of the death of sitting members. __
