The Race to Eject KCR

IN POLITICS, THINGS have a way of coming full circle. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Telangana, where former Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao is facing an exodus of the kind that he had once engineered, nearly emptying out the state Telugu Desam Party (TDP) unit and the Telangana Congress after taking over as the first chief minister of India’s newest state in 2014. Months after a shock defeat at the hands of Congress in the Assembly elections last year that saw the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) diminish from 88 MLAs in 2018 to 39, KCR’s party has now been hit by wave after wave of desertions, including by sitting MPs Venkatesh Netha, BB Patil, P Ramulu, Pasunuri Dayakar and G Ranjith Reddy, Khairatabad MLA Danam Nagender, Rajya Sabha floor leader K Keshava Rao and former Wardhannapet MLA Aroori Ramesh. BRS leaders have been veering to the right and the left as though due to a Coriolis effect. “The way people like Keshava Rao are leav­ing saha kutumba [en famille], there may be no young blood left in the party,” says a former BRS minister. “There is no organisa­tion. The chain of communication between the top leaders and the booth-level worker is broken. MLAs who lost their seats are in no mood to work for the party,” he adds. Rao has joined Con­gress, along with his daughter, Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) Mayor Gadwal Vijayalaxmi. The party, buoyed by its winning performance in the 2023 Assembly elec­tions, is hoping to improve on its parliamentary seats tally. In the 2019 General Election, nine of the 17 Lok Sabha seats from the state went to BRS, four to BJP, three to Congress and one to Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM. Telangana goes to the polls on May 13.

Out of BRS’ nine sitting MPs, five have switched sides. “Se­nior leaders want to be on the winning side, not only to reap the benefits after the polls but also to safeguard their businesses and interests in real estate,” says a BRS leader who is being wooed by BJP. Another high-profile exit by father-daughter duo Kadiyam Srihari, a senior BRS leader and the Station Ghanpur MLA, and his daughter Kavya, who has got the Congress ticket for Warangal, has rattled the BRS leadership. Kavya, who is contest­ing for the first time, cited allegations of corruption and phone-tapping against BRS as the main reason for quitting the party. She is up against Aroori Ramesh, who has been fielded by BJP. She was also BRS’ choice for the seat, before she quit along with her father to join Congress. As both BJP and Congress roll out the red carpet for defectors from BRS, many other leaders are expected to abandon what is increasingly looking like a sinking ship. BRS candidates find themselves pitted against their former colleagues in constituencies like Zaheerabad, Adilabad, Chevella, Nalgonda, Nagarkurnool, Mahabubabad, Warangal, Secunderabad and Malkajgiri. In places where there is a three-cornered contest with all parties fielding worthy candidates, BRS is said to have an edge. BRS working president KT Rama Rao has, in fact, alleged that BJP and Congress are working in collusion and that Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, who has been making friendly gestures towards the Modi government, would join the saffron party

after the Lok Sabha polls. If BRS is undermined, it would mean the death of ideology and identity politics in Telangana, he has warned. Rama Rao’s uncle, former minister and Siddipet MLA T Harish Rao, has accused Reddy of mortgaging the self-esteem of Telangana by frequenting the corridors of power in Delhi for favours.

BJP has meanwhile set high expectations after doubling its voteshare in the 2023 Assembly elections—from 7 per cent in 2018—to 14 per cent and winning eight Assembly seats. “We are hoping to emerge as the second-largest party in Telangana after Congress. BRS is on the backfoot and this is to our advantage,” says Telangana BJP chief and Union Minister G Kishan Reddy. “Soon, there will no longer be a BRS.” “If Harish Rao is appointed working president and KCR serves as the leader of the opposition, BRS can be revived. KTR does not have the experience necessary to bring senior leaders together,” says a BRS leader, adding that the party’s slide coincides with its rebranding as a national party. “BJP has ensured that it was a nonstarter in other states except Maharashtra. KCR is likely to give up his national ambitions and focus on the party’s original identity,” he says. While it is too soon to write off BRS, which was born of a people’s move­ment for statehood, the arrest of K Kavitha, KCR’s daughter and an MLC, by the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) on March 15 in a money-laundering case linked to the now-scrapped Delhi excise policy has dealt another blow to the party that was already smart­ing from its electoral losses. KCR’s image as a flinty warrior with a fire deep inside of him has taken a hit, forcing him to emerge from the splendid isolation of his farmhouse to meet the people. That fire—which lit the fuse of revolution—still burns, albeit feebly, but he is unable to generate a sympathy wave that could possibly save the party, say BRS leaders. “He has to let go of his ego and make a heartfelt appeal to the people. He should admit the mistakes of the past and ask for their blessings. If he had risked his neck and contested the Lok Sabha polls, it would have sent a strong message,” says a senior BRS leader.

KCR’s image as a flinty warrior with a fire deep inside of him has taken a hit, forcing him to emerge from the splendid isolation of his farmhouse to meet the people. That fire—which lit the fuse of revolution—still burns, albeit feebly, but he is unable to generate a sympathy wave that could possibly save the party

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KCR’S RHETORIC THESE days is less mordant wit and more hard-wrought allegations against the Congress government led by Revanth Reddy, whom he has accused of water mismanagement leading to a state-wide drought and an alleged uptick in farmer suicides. The former chief minister is touring the districts to assess the extent of crop damage. Reddy, however, is carefully walking in KCR’s own footsteps—whether it is by encouraging defections, making former ministers and police officers pay for their alleged unlawful tapping of phones, or using unparliamentary language. Veeramalla Prakash Rao, one of the founders of BRS and an expert on water resources, says very few farmers died of water scarcity during KCR’s term in office. “Revanth has blamed the situation on drought but the fact is there has been above-average rainfall this year. Neither the BRS government nor Revanth bothered to announce crop holidays and to lift water from Medigadda and Nagarjunasagar to fill the water bodies across the state. They were too busy with Assembly elections. Revanth has an ulterior motive—he wants to somehow prove that the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project is a failure and that’s why he didn’t have the water lifted. All the while, Andhra Pradesh has been silently taking water from the right canal of Nagarjunasagar without informing anyone,”

While Reddy has been slapping cases on BRS leaders with a rare vehemence, the Telangana Congress is not without its troubles. Senior Congress leader G Niranjan recently wrote to party president Mallikarjun Kharge, asking him to recon­sider the decision to field defectors. “The people of Telangana have defeated BRS and voted Congress to power with a wish to have a change of power in the state, but fielding D Nagender, Sunita Reddy and Ranjith Reddy as Congress candidates is against the expectations of the people and is also insult to the Congress cadre, and will demoralise them. We also have to consider what message it gives to the people and cadre,” the letter said. If Con­gress cadres don’t work in earnest for its candidates, its votes could split between BRS and BJP in many high-profile constituencies.

“We are the only party that is backing its candidates 100 per cent,” says Eatala Rajender, a former senior BRS leader who joined BJP ahead of the 2023 Assembly elections, contesting from Gajwel against KCR and from Huzurabad (he lost both). “BJP has an edge in many seats because of poor judgement by Congress and BRS. Add to this the Modi wave and we should be able to put up a good show,” says Rajender, who is contesting from Malkajgiri, the country’s largest Lok Sabha constituency with 31.5 lakh voters, in the upcoming elections. In Medak, for instance, BRS has fielded P Venkatrama Reddy against BJP’s M Raghunandan Rao and Congress’ Neelam Madhu. Reddy, a former IAS officer, was arrested by CBI for cheating and criminal conspiracy and accused of cheating Canara Bank by submitting false financial statements. He has also faced criminal contempt proceedings for allegedly threatening seed dealers in Siddipet in his capacity as district collector. BJP, for its part, has fielded Hindutva activist Madhavi Latha from Hyderabad against Owaisi, who has held the seat since 2004. In Nizamabad, BRS has fielded Bajireddy Govardhan, a former MLA and a Munnuru Kapu leader, against BJP’s Dharmapuri Arvind and Congress’ Jeevan Reddy, hoping that the Backward Class votes will split between the two national parties. In Nagarkurnool, the party is banking on former IPS officer RS Praveen Kumar. Out of the five reserved seats in the state—Adilabad and Mahabubabad (Scheduled Tribes), and Peddapalli, Nagarkurnool and Waran­gal (Scheduled Castes)—BRS had won four in the 2019 polls, with Adilabad alone voting for BJP. This time round, after defec­tions by sitting MPs, there were reportedly no takers for BRS tickets from these constituencies.

BRS working president KT Rama Rao has alleged that BJP and Congress are working in collusion and that Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, who is making friendly gestures towards the Modi government, would join the saffron party after the Lok Sabha polls

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What BRS lacks most of all is a slogan, a narrative. It is going to the polls with its eyes flashing at BJP and fingers pointed at Con­gress, while it has done little to nourish the party and its support base back to health. Congress, which will kickstart its campaign from the “Telangana Janajatara” meeting to be held in Hyderabad on April 6, will have to do more than rest on its laurels to actively clear the air about water management and Rythu Bandhu funds disbursement to farmers. BJP, which is fielding more candidates with BRS pedigree than without, will meanwhile have to find ways to boost the morale of party old-timers. “Many of us are still upset at how Bandi Sanjay, who built the party from scratch, was sidelined ahead of the Assembly polls, but we are hoping PM Modi and Amit Shah suitably reward all the old leaders,” says Sundar Raj, a 28-year-old convenience store owner and BJP sup­porter from Medchal. For BJP, this election could well mark a turning point in its efforts to expand its footprint in south India.

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