Hyderabad: Rythu Bandhu and other populist schemes which are being implemented, with the TRS government spending over Rs 40,000 crore per year, have failed to improve the electoral prospects of the ruling party, reveals the latest internal survey ordered by party president and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao.

The reason said for this was the severe anti-incumbency against 40 MLAs, and include those who won on TRS tickets in the 2014 elections and those who defected to the ruling party from other parties.





This survey has forced Mr Rao to rethink the promise he has made for the past four years of giving tickets to all sitting MLAs in 2019, say the party sources. TRS has a strength of 90 MLAs at present and the survey revealed that only 50 would retain seats if all sitting MLAs are given tickets in 2019. The half-way mark is 60.

While the magic figure to form government is 60, TRS had won 62 seats in the 2014 elections. However, scores of MLAs from TD, Congress, YSRC, BSP, CPI defected to TRS later besides TRS clinching 2 seats from Congress in by polls in Narayankhed and Pa-leru, taking the strength to 90. With the 2019 Assembly elections less than a year away, the CM has ordered surveys once in three months by three different survey agencies since January this year.

Surveys were conducted in the past two years too and KCR himself revealed the survey results in a party meeting saying that TRS would bag over 100 seats out of the total 119 in 2019 polls and promised to give tickets to all sitting MLAs.

However, the latest survey, which revealed anti-incumbency against 40 siting MLAs, came as a shocker . Party insiders now feel that KCR only tried to keep the party flock together by stating all these years that TRS would win over 100 seats and all sitting MLAs will be given tickets. This is to ensure that no TRS MLA jumps to other parties and weakens the TRS government and the party with elections just few months away.

KCR revealed the 'real survey results' to deny tickets for non-performers and give tickets only to the winning horses. The survey revealed that the party's condition is weak in south and north Telangana districts and even in districts which were considered to be TRS strongholds, the party is slowly losing ground due to non-performing MLAs, especially the first-timers.