HYDERABAD:K Chandrashekar Rao’s bet has turned out to be a winning one, as his Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) retained power with a landslide victory after dissolving the assembly ahead of schedule.

The victory was of the TRS government’s people-centric schemes and reignited regional sentiments against the purported threat of shelving of welfare programmes and projects if the party failed to retain power.

The TRS won 87 of the 119 assembly seats in Telangana, the nation’s youngest state, compared with 63 in 2014. Most exit polls had predicted its return to power, but with a much smaller margin.

The elections were held nearly six months before schedule, after TRS president and chief minister Rao decided to dissolve the assembly on September 6, about nine months before completing the five-year tenure.

The Congress, which formed a pre-poll alliance with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and two others, ended up with 19 seats, down from 21 in 2014, while the TDP won two seats as against 15 last time. The other two partners, CPI and Telangana Jana Sena, couldn’t open their account. The BJP, which has contested from all the 119 constituencies and deployed large resources and lined up its top brass from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah to chief ministers of BJP ruled states and union ministers, suffered

Telangana Congress president N Uttam Kumar Reddy, meanwhile, said he suspected tampering of electronic voting machines and demanded the Election Commission to count the VVPAT slips. He asked all Congress candidates to submit letters to the returning officers concerned seeking counting of paper trails. “We strongly suspect that the Election Commission has colluded with the ruling dispensation right from deletion of lakhs of votes to tampering of EVMs. Our doubts are only rising as the Election Commission is refusing to count the VVPAT slips,” said Reddy.

Analysts said the experiment of the Congress teaming up with the TDP, which rules neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, boomeranged on the party, as it

“It was the entry of Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu, joining the Congress-led People’s Front, which has changed the political equations swiftly,” said political analyst Machala Srinivasa Rao. “The ruling TRS, which was already banking on the large loyalist base comprising welfare scheme beneficiaries and Muslim minority votes, got a wonderful opportunity in the form of Chandrababu Naidu to reignite the native sentiments among the Telangana people against the supremacy of Andhra leadership. Portraying the threat that the welfare schemes and projects will get shelved if the People’s Front guided by Andhra leadership was elected,