Blood, sweat and TRS
For the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and its founder K. Chandrashekar Rao (KCR), a second consecutive assembly poll win was made sweeter by being even more emphatic than the one that brought him to power in 2014. Having called for an early poll-eight months ahead of schedule-and sustained a long 90-day election campaign, the TRS converted incumbency into a phenomenal poll gain, riding on Telangana pride and pro-people welfare. The gamble clicked and with it "the political fragility" he had referred to as the trigger for dissolving the first Telangana legislative assembly receded.
The TRS has crushed the long-standing hypothesis of political pundits that larger turnouts are bad news for the party in power. The party, which won 63 seats in the 119-member house in 2014, bagged 88 on December 11. KCR reminded voters of the benefits handed out under a slew of schemes-both welfare-oriented and direct freebies-and they seem to have been convinced that the CM has their best
