Jubilee Hills Emboldens Revant Reddy, Marking The Continued Decline Of The BRS

The emphatic win in Jubilee Hills signals that the Congress’s 2023 mandate was not a transient outcome of anti-incumbency but the expression of a durable political base that continues to hold. The timing of the victory—on the eve of the government’s second anniversary—further reinforces the party’s organisational grip and voter confidence. For Chief Minister Revanth Reddy, reclaiming Jubilee Hills carries added political weight: it consolidates his authority within the Congress, counters narratives about dissent and waning control, and strengthens his position ahead of impending policy and organisational decisions.

Revant Reddy is in a position to assert supremacy 

Congress candidate Naveen Yadav won the seat by a margin of 24,729 votes, comfortably defeating his nearest rival, the BRS’s Magnati Sunita Gopinath. Yadav secured over 50 per cent of the total votes polled, underscoring the scale of the Congress surge. The BJP’s Deepak Reddy finished a distant third with just 17,061 votes—about 8 per cent of the vote share—reinforcing the party’s continued struggle to gain traction in Hyderabad’s urban constituencies.

With this win, Revant Reddy will be in a better position to assert his supremacy in the party and the cabinet. There are rumours doing the rounds about an impending cabinet reshuffle and about the PCC president, Manoj Kumar Goud, being considered for a ministerial post.

A buoyant chief minister, Revant Reddy, attributed the victory to the government's developmental policies. Taking a swipe at the former BRS government, he said the previous regime was interested only in projects that reaped kickbacks.

This is the first time the Congress has secured Jubilee Hills, a constituency embedded in the politically complex landscape of Greater Hyderabad. Notably, in the 2023 election—despite being swept out of power—the BRS managed to retain 16 of the 24 seats in this urban belt, underscoring its entrenched support. The Congress’s breakthrough this time was not accidental; it was engineered through a calibrated outreach to the AIMIM, a party with substantial influence in the region, where Muslims account for nearly 30 per cent of the electorate. The victory thus reflects both strategic coalition-building and a shifting urban political mood.

BRS's crisis deepens

For the BRS—already grappling with internal fissures, leadership uncertainty, and an eroding cadre base—the Jubilee Hills defeat only deepens its crisis. The party’s lone consolation, even amid this rout, is the BJP’s dismal performance. Despite its sustained efforts to replace the BRS as the principal opposition force, the BJP failed to make an impression; its candidate, Deepak Reddy, could not even retain his deposit, exposing the gap between the party’s campaign bravado and on-ground support.

However, BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao sought to downplay the significance of the bypoll outcome. Calling the result “disappointing but only a minor setback,” he urged party cadres to stay focused and work towards bringing K. Chandrashekar Rao back to power. “Victories and defeats are part of politics; the BRS will not be bowed by minor setbacks,” he remarked, framing the loss as a temporary interruption rather than a reflection of deeper structural problems within the party.

This is the Congress’s second successive bypoll victory, following its win in the Secunderabad Cantonment seat, which it too prised away from the BRS. The reversal is telling: after winning the constituency in 2023 by over 17,000 votes, the BRS fell to a distant third in the 2024 contest. The bypoll setbacks in both Cantonment and now Jubilee Hills highlight the eroding base of the once formidable BRS and also Congress’s ability to penetrate solidly into the urban centres

Had the Congress secured only a narrow win, the AIMIM would likely have claimed decisive credit. In 2023, when it contested independently, the AIMIM polled just 7,848 votes, compared to over 18,000 votes in 2018 when Naveen Yadav—now the Congress winner—ran as an AIMIM-backed independent. With the present victory margin comfortably exceeding the AIMIM’s past vote share, the Congress can argue that the mandate is unequivocally its own, rather than a borrowed consolidation of AIMIM support.

The two bypoll victories have strengthened Revanth Reddy’s position within the Telangana Congress, while the loss of Jubilee Hills—coming on the heels of the Secunderabad Cantonment defeat—signals the BRS’s continuing slide. Moreover, at a time when the Congress is being routed in Bihar, the Jubilee Hills result underscores once again how political currents in the South often diverge sharply from those in the North.