Greater Hyderabad civic polls: 5 reasons why you should track it

The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), the fifth largest metropolitan city area in the country, is going to polls today after a high-decibel campaign by political parties.

In all, 1,122 candidates are in the fray for the 150 wards or divisions of GHMC. The ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) is contesting 150 seats, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on 149, the Congress on 146, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) on 106 and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) on 51 seats in the polls. The counting of votes will be held on December 4.

It is rare for a local body election to have assumed so much hype in recent times, so much so that the BJP deployed its top leadership, including its party president JP Nadda, a battery of Central ministers, including Home Minister Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath to woo voters ahead of the polls.

Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao (KCR), whose TRS dominated the last GHMC polls by bagging 99 of the 150 seats, pressed his cabinet ministers, MLAs and MPs into service in the aggressive campaign to counter the BJP onslaught.

Apart from TRS’ 99 seats, the AIMIM won 44, the BJP four, the Congress two and TDP one seat in the 2016 GHMC polls. But why has a local body election turned into a high-stake battle. Here are five reasons

The BJP’s Telangana expansion by capturing Hyderabad

The BJP’s high-pitched Hyderabad campaign seems to be well thought out as part of the larger plan of making inroads in Telangana ahead of 2023 assembly elections.

The 150 wards of GHMC are spread over 24 assembly seats which is about one-fifth of the 119 assembly seats in Telangana. The GHMC includes areas falling under two Lok Sabha seats—Hyderabad and Secunderabad. AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi represents Hyderabad while BJP’s G Kishan Reddy, Union the minister of state for Home, represents Secunderabad.

With the decline of the Congress and the TDP in the state, chief minister KCR’s TRS has virtually faced no opposition and enjoyed a monopoly since the state came into being in 2014. So irrelevant has the opposition in Telangana, that the leader of Opposition in the Telangana Assembly is Akbaruddin Owaisi, of the AIMIM, considered an informal ally of the TRS. It is this vacuum in opposition which the BJP sees as an opportunity to occupy and make its presence felt in Telangana.

The party’s strength has increased in the state since the last GHMC polls when it won just four seats. It won four of the 17 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, and, more recently, Dubbak assembly seat in the bypoll, taking its tally to two in the assembly. The party is reportedly considering the local body polls as an opener to challenge the ruling TRS, a party that has often supported the NDA government in Parliament (Rajya Sabha).

Battle of prestige for incumbent KCR

The KCR government, facing anti-incumbency, decided to advance GHMC elections soon after Dubbak assembly by-election loss to the BJP last month. The TRS, analysts said, feared further consolidation by the BJP, which has been preparing for the GHMC polls well before the by-polls.For KCR, the GHMC polls are a prestige battle. In the 2019 general elections his TRS, which swept the 2018 Telangana Assembly elections, could win only nine of the 17 Lok Sabha seats. TRS has lost significant ground after his win in 2018 state assembly elections. Its vote share declined from 47.4 percent in 2018 to 41.7 percent in the 2019 general elections.

One of the reasons for analysts to say there is a certain opportunity for BJP are the governance shortfalls in the city where the local body is ruled by the TRS. More recently, the TRS faced flak over its poor handling of October floods in the GHMC areas. The party was also criticised for the poor management of relief distribution to the flood-affected families. The model code of conduct came into effect on November 17, leaving many people without relief.

All eyes on Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM

Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM is the only party that has shown some presence other than TRS in the city and beyond. AIMIM is contesting 51 seats in Hyderabad AIMIM made national headlines recently by winning five of the 20 seats his party contested in Bihar polls triggering speculation about the party's national expansion. But it is contesting not even half of the 150 seats in its pocket borough Hyderabad which has 40 percent Muslim population giving credence to reports of its informal alliance with TRS.

AIMIM’s Muslim-centric politics makes it a fertile turf for the BJP leaders to push through its Hindutva agenda. Though the TRS and AIMIM have not announced any alliance, they often consider each other ‘friendly’. Throughout the campaign, almost all BJP leaders questioned the ‘unholy’ alliance between the two parties by asserting that a vote for TRS would mean a vote for AIMIM.

The Hyderabad MP is often blamed by the opposition parties, including the Congress, for being a ‘vote-cutter’ and Team B of the BJP. Many say the more Owaisi rises, the better it is for BJP’s polarising politics.

Hyderabad to have a woman mayor

For the next two terms, Hyderabad will have a woman as its Mayor of GHMC. The post is reserved for a woman corporator in the general category for the first time. In the last term, the Mayoral post was reserved for Backward Classes. In the past, Sarojini Pulla Reddy, Rani Kumudini Devi, Banda Karthika Reddy have served as Mayors of Hyderabad.

National vs local issues

With issues like Biryani, Pakistan, Rohingyas, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and surgical strikes having dominated the campaign, it is hard to believe that it is just a hyper-local civic body election being fought in one of the fastest-growing metropolises in the country. Issues such as roads, sanitation, power, drinking water, that would otherwise dominate civic body polls have, it seems, remained confined to poll manifestos.

All three parties, the TRS, the BJP and the Congress have made strong pitches for development, at least in their manifestos by offering sops on drinking water, property tax and power. The BJP has also promised a free COVID-19 vaccine like it did in Bihar assembly elections.

A recent study conducted by the Institute of Perception Studies (IPS) in Hyderabad, on the eve of civic body elections, revealed that 95 per cent of people want the 'Right to Recall' non-performing elected representatives.