A farmer from Raayaparthi mandal in Warangal district broke down in tears on Monday while speaking to former minister Errabelli Dayakar Rao, admitting that he regretted voting for the Congress party in the last election.

The farmer, Kasiraboina Lachchaiah, did not hold back. “I ousted KCR and I have destroyed my own life,” he told the former minister, in a conversation that quickly turned into a public confession on the streets of the mandal headquarters.

Errabelli was on foot that day, walking from house to house with party workers at the Raayaparthi mandal centre. The purpose of the visit was to create awareness about graduate voter enrolment. Instead, he found himself face to face with a farmer who wanted to talk about something far more painful.

Lachchaiah’s words were blunt, and they carried the weight of someone who feels he has been left with nothing. Asked by the former minister whether the yasangi crops were growing, he answered that the Congress government had come to power and the crops were not growing well. He said there was no water. Asked whether he was getting electricity, he said there was none and that he had been ruined.

Then came the line that is now being repeated across the region.

“Voting for Congress was a mistake. I am slapping both my cheeks now. We will never vote for Congress again in this life.”

Lachchaiah folded his hands toward Errabelli as he spoke. He was not only apologising for his vote. He was asking for his old political world back. He wanted KCR to become chief minister again, and he wanted Errabelli to win as an MLA once more. His wife, Rajitha, was with him, and the couple made their wish clear in front of the former minister.

The gesture of slapping his own cheeks is a traditional way of showing deep regret in Telugu-speaking households, and Lachchaiah used it without any hesitation. There was no anger in his voice when he spoke about KCR. There was only the sound of a man who believes he made a choice that cost him dearly.

Errabelli answered in a measured tone. He told the farmers not to lose heart. He said the Congress government, which he described as troubling people from all sections of society, would go soon. He also told the farmers not to panic over the drought, insisting that KCR and the pink flag of the party would stand by them and protect them.

The regret that is spreading

What makes this exchange stand out is not only the farmer’s anger. It is the fact that the emotion was captured in public, in a village setting, with a political leader standing in front of him and listening. The conversation followed a simple set of questions and answers, and each answer pointed in the same direction: crops are failing, power is missing, and water is not reaching the fields.

For voters in rural Telangana, the everyday problems of farming matter more than party slogans. A farmer who cannot count on electricity for irrigation or water for his crop does not talk about policy papers. He talks about loss, and he talks about who he trusted. In Lachchaiah’s telling, the vote he cast for Congress has become the source of his suffering.

Why Telangana is watching this moment

The story is rooted entirely in Telangana’s local politics. Warangal district, and in particular the Raayaparthi area, is where a former minister was out campaigning on the voter registration drive for graduates. The farmer’s words came during that drive, and they touched on the state government’s handling of the farm sector, which is at the heart of life in many Telangana villages.

The moment also shows how political messaging is being carried into villages. Errabelli was not speaking to a crowd of party cadres in a hall. He was walking through the village, going door to door, and it was in that setting that a farmer chose to speak his mind. That kind of unscripted encounter tends to travel far beyond the village it started in.

There is also a clear emotional pull to the story. It is hard to read the words of a farmer who says he has destroyed himself by his own vote without feeling something. The shock comes from the bluntness. The regret comes from the sense that a decision made at the ballot box is now being lived out in dry fields and dark homes.

What the account does not tell us

The source report is a first-hand account of a single farmer’s conversation with a former minister. It does not include a response from the Congress party or from the state government to the farmer’s complaints about electricity and water. It also does not provide data on the extent of crop damage in Raayaparthi or elsewhere in the district.

That gap matters. A single farmer’s emotional statement is powerful, and it deserves to be heard. But readers should understand that the account is a personal testimony, delivered in the middle of an active political campaign. The farmer’s words reflect his own experience, and the former minister’s reply reflects his party’s position. Neither side of that exchange is a full picture of conditions across the state.

Still, the image is hard to forget. A farmer stands in front of a senior political leader, folds his hands, and asks him to come back as an MLA while saying he will never again vote for Congress. He was not asked for a quote. He gave one anyway. The story is about regret, but it is also about how quickly a political mood can turn when crops fail and the lights stay off.

As the graduate voter enrolment drive continues in the constituency, this kind of conversation is likely to be repeated in other villages. For now, the words of one farmer from Raayaparthi have given Telangana a raw and unfiltered picture of what some voters are feeling today, and of how quickly a vote cast in hope can become a source of regret.