It is still a month before Lionel Messi sets foot in Hyderabad, but football is already in the air. Football enthusiast and a player of some skill, Revanth Reddy, demonstrated on Friday, how to score a political goal.

After three successive electoral defeats in the Jubilee Hills assembly constituency - 2014, 2018 and 2023 - the Congress managed to storm the goalpost in the by-election whose result was announced on Friday.

In the assembly elections in December 2023, the Congress failed to open its account in the 24 urban seats in the capital city Hyderabad. Now it has made a dent in the BRS citadel by winning two seats in bypolls - Secunderabad Cantonment last year and Jubilee Hills now.

What made the victory doubly sweet, a la Hyderabadi delicacy double ka meetha , was the margin. The

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