Hyderabad: Telangana's ruling party, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) is in an introspection mode after the unexpected Lok Sabha election shocker that's seen as a setback to the chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao.

According to reports, the Rao-led outfit welcomed into its fold as many of 11 Congress MLAs since early March expecting them to further shore up the party's prospects in the April 11 Lok Sabha elections. But that was not to be. The move to get them on board may have backfired.

Before the Telangana polls, which has a total of 17 Lok Sabha segments, TRS was confident of sweeping the elections in the company of AIMIM, led by Hyderabad Lok Sabha member Asaduddin Owaisi.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the TRS bagged 11 seats and the Congress two. The BJP, TDP, YSRCP and AIMIM shared one seat each.

This time, the TRS saw its tally going down to nine. The BJP and the Congress won four and three seats respectively.

The biggest shocker for the TRS was the defeat of the chief minister's daughter K Kavitha in Nizamabad and B Vinod Kumar, the party's deputy leader in the previous Lok Sabha, in Karimnagar.

The TRS was expecting a hung Parliament and keen to play a role at the national level, but the NDA coming back to power on its strength dashed its hopes.

Rao had spearheaded the effort to bring together non-BJP and non-Congress regional parties on a common platform for collective bargaining power.