The TRS has managed to secure only nine out of 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana, a major setback to the party that was confident of sweeping the state.
Two key TRS leaders, K Kavitha, daughter of Telangana CM KCR, and B Vinod Kumar, candidates from Nizamabad and Karimnagar respectively were defeated by BJP candidates D Arvind and Bandi Sanjay.
Arvind, son of former TRS MP, D Srinivas emerged a giant slayer by defeating Kavitha with 71,057 votes. Bandi Sanjay defeated Vinod Kumar with a majority of 89,508 votes.
Though the BJP was decimated in the 2018 Assembly elections, which took place recently, the party managed to pull off a major feat winning four MP seats. Out of the five sitting BJP MLAs, only one MLA was re-elected in the Telangana Assembly elections. While the Congress managed to win three seats, its margins were very small.
Congress candidates from Nalgonda, Malkajgiri and Bhongir managed to win the elections with small margins. Telangana Congress chief Uttam Kumar Reddy who had contested from Nalgonda won with 25,682 votes, Malkajgiri candidate Revanth Reddy won with 10,919 votes and Bhongir candidate Komatireddy Venkat Reddy won with 5,219 votes.
Meanwhile, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi was re-elected for the fourth term from Hyderabad seat. He won with a majority of 2,82,186 votes.
KCR had hopes of playing a key role in national politics. Alongside ally Asaduddin Owaisi from the AIMIM, he had hoped to sweep these elections. The TRS seemed to be banking on a hung verdict, in which case they would play the role of kingmaker by supporting either NDA or UPA. However, the BJP managed to win more than 300 seats on its own. For his Federal Front coalition, KCR made several visits to regional party leaders like Mamata Banerjee, MK Stalin, Kumaraswamy, Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav.
In the 2014 Lok Sabha Elections, the TRS won 11 seats, the Congress 2, the YSRCP, TDP, AIMIM and the BJP won one each.
In 2018, KCR dissolved the Assembly eight months ahead of his term, thereby avoiding simultaneous polls in the state. In Assembly elections took place in December and TRS routed the opposition, with the ruling party increasing their seats tally to 88. The Congress managed to win just 19 seats.