The Munugode Magnet

IT HAD BEEN three years in the making. Last month, when Telangana Congress leader and Munugode MLA Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy finally joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and resigned from the Assembly, it surprised no one. The timing of the move though makes it a contingency for both Congress and the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS). As it prepares to vote in 2023, Telangana is a complex field, with politicians aligning and re-aligning around not only traditional poles like Congress and TRS but BJP as well. TRS, with 103 out of a total of 119 MLAs in the Assembly, is the dominant party, but those disenchanted with it after two consecutive terms in power must now choose between Congress, which had won 19 seats in 2018 but lost 12 to TRS’ poaching drive, and BJP, which despite winning a lone seat, has managed to position itself as an attractive alternative. At the heart of the story of how BJP is gearing to make a bid for 70 Assembly seats in Telangana is a familiar domino plot, chipping away at the myth of TRS’ infallibility as also Congress’ vote bank. BJP first shook things up by winning the Dubbaka Assembly seat in a 2020 by-election, where it fielded a castaway from the TRS politburo, M Raghunandan Rao. A year later, it welcomed former minister and TRS insider Etela Rajender who won with a thumping majority from Huzurabad. Now, the party has found a third prospective winner in Raj Gopal Reddy, who had won Munugode with a hefty margin in 2018, polling 97,239 votes against TRS candidate Kusukuntla Prabhakar Reddy’s 74,687—with BJP’s own Gangidi Manohar Reddy polling 12,725 votes.

If the flamboyant satrap wins on a BJP ticket, it will open the doors for other leaders looking for a new home, says Etela Rajender. “We have been friends for years, and had consulted each other before I joined BJP,” he says. “Raj Gopal and I had agreed that if I won on a BJP ticket, he too would join the party. Now, if he wins, and we are sure he will, there are many waiting in line to work with BJP. We have a whole programme lined up, a systematic plan is in place.” By “many”, he means not only disgruntled Congressmen, but also some sitting TRS MLAs who are unlikely to be fielded again by the party which has hired political consultant Prashant Kishor to come up with a formula to counter anti-incumbency. “BJP has no presence in Nalgonda, Khammam, Warangal and parts of Mahabubnagar today. But after Munugode, the landscape will start to look very different,” says Rajender. “Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao is losing his shine day by day. All his talk of entering national politics does not fly with the people. They are ready for change, so who is the alternative? Congress has good local leaders, but people distrust them now—what if they switch to TRS after being voted to power?”

Implicitly, the battle for Munugode is a relegation race. The election next year will be fought between the parties that grab the top two spots. Munugode, a constituency in Nalgonda district less than 100 km from Hyderabad, is not a typical bellwether seat. A bastion of the Congress and the Left, it fell to TRS in 2014, but was later reclaimed by Congress. According to a recent poll by Hyderabad-based polling consultancy PsyBe Labs, TRS has an estimated 32 per cent vote share in the constituency, with Congress a close second at 31 per cent. This must be read with two other data points from the poll—that BJP’s vote share in the constituency has been rising sharply since 2019, and that the most preferred candidate is Raj Gopal Reddy, followed by TRS’ Kusukuntla Prabhakar Reddy.

Congress’ prospective candidates Palvai Sravanthi Reddy and Challa Ramakrishna Reddy polled much lower. However, there is much that can change with money, optics, tactics and boots on the ground.

WHILE NO PARTY has announced a candidate yet, the Revanth Reddy-led Telangana Congress has been under pressure to zero in on one. “We will arrive at a decision in a week to 10 days,” says Revanth Reddy. “Congress is the only party that can save democracy both in Telangana and at the Centre. For the past eight years, both TRS and BJP have failed the people. They are two sides of the same coin.” Revanth Reddy is an energetic but polarising figure in the state Congress, and even as he works with poll strategist Sunil Kanugolu to mount an effective offence next year, many elders in the party are bound to feel overlooked. “There are always many different opinions within Congress. In Telangana, some leaders have been airing them in the open repeatedly. They have now been cautioned to watch what they say,” says AICC General Secretary and Telangana in-charge Manickam Tagore. Is he worried about any more desertions? “We cannot prevent people from leaving for ideological reasons. And we are happy to be rid of non-performing assets who are being welcomed by BJP. As a party, we are ready to face the bypoll,” Tagore says, underplaying the importance of Munugode. TRS and BJP have each put up a big show since Raj Gopal Reddy’s resignation, with KCR and Amit Shah addressing massive meetings in the constituency. Congress has, meanwhile, been working on the ground, says Tagore. “We were the first to organise a meeting in Munugode. Revanth was there, all the local leaders and party workers were there, and we are happy with where we stand despite Raj Gopal Reddy’s betrayal.”

Raj Gopal Reddy’s brother, Komatireddy Venkat Reddy, is Congress MP from Bhuvanagiri, and a star campaigner. While he may not canvas against his brother, it is not yet certain if he too will join BJP. The influential Komatireddy family has long lobbied for bigger roles, including that of state president, in Congress, and has come under fire for practising ‘blackmail politics’. “Raj Gopal Reddy was a sitting MLC during the 2018 elections, but he forced the party to field him,” says Palvai Sravanthi Reddy, whose father Palvai Govardhan Reddy, a veteran Congressman, represented Munugode multiple times in the Assembly. “In the 2014 Assembly election, the constituency was allotted to the Communist Party of India (CPI) which was part of the Congress alliance, but the cadre wanted me to contest,” says Sravanthi Reddy, who lost to TRS’ Kusukuntla Prabhakar Reddy, standing second with 27,441 votes, a whisker ahead of the BJP candidate. She decided not to defy her party again in 2018. “Congress has a loyal vote bank here, and that will certainly be a factor in the bypoll and work against Raj Gopal Reddy,” she says.

BJP’s can-do attitude, along with Raj Gopal Reddy’s considerable wealth and influence—he was the richest candidate in fray in the 2018 Assembly election in Telangana—make him a favourite, however. “BJP is desperate to make inroads into Dakshin Telangana. But the Munugode bypoll is neither an issue-based election nor a referendum,” says Boora Narsaiah Goud, a former MP and doctor from Nalgonda who is among the prospective candidates on TRS’ list. “The TRS government has resolved the fluoride issue in Nalgonda with Mission Bhagiratha. Two reservoirs are being constructed to improve access to irrigation. There is a lot of potential for growth, considering the district’s proximity to Hyderabad,” he says, adding that despite the anti-incumbency factor, surveys predict a clear win for TRS in the 2023 elections. In 2018, TRS polled 46.87 per cent of total votes in the state, nearly 13 per cent more than what it had secured in 2014. According to a recent survey by AARAA Poll Strategies across all 119 Assembly segments, TRS would coast to victory if elections were held today, but with a reduced vote share of 38.88 per cent. The AARAA survey points out that TRS has 87 strong candidates, Congress 53, and BJP 29. As many as 17 TRS MLAs are facing severe anti-incumbency, as per the report.

“There is enough anger to keep a check on KCR, his son KT Rama Rao and daughter Kavitha. But the anti-KCR vote is going to be split between Congress and BJP. If it wasn’t for KCR’s strategy of minimising the opposition early on, BJP could not have made such rapid progress in the state,” says Sravanth Devabhaktini, co-founder, PsyBe Labs. BJP, he points out, has manufactured a three-pronged narrative—it is attacking KCR’s dynasty politics and alleged corruption, and playing the Hindutva card, albeit to limited effect, while also invoking the development agenda of the Narendra Modi government. The unflinching storytellers in the party have seized opportunities to entice voters with the possibilities that a BJP-led “double-engine ki sarkar” would throw open, even as senior leaders in Delhi have made it a point to be highly visible in Telangana. Recently, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman drove the point home quite literally during a visit to fair price shops in Kamareddy when she reprimanded a district collector for not displaying flex banners with Modi’s photograph.

As BJP and Congress proffer themselves as alternatives to KCR, the chief minister is busy packaging himself as the alternative to Prime Minister Modi. While his speeches, including in Munugode, have of late been about a BJP-mukt India, people are looking for the spirit beyond the letter of his arguments. “KCR is building a narrative for his local audience. First there was the Gujarat model, then AAP’s Delhi model. Now KCR is looking to brand the Telangana model of development,” says political analyst Palvai Raghavendra Reddy. As he eyes the national stage, he has sought out the support of a familiar constituency that stood with him during the agitation for statehood—farmers. But there are yet chinks in his armour proving harder to fix. “Employment creation is a major challenge. Students were once his biggest strength, they are now his biggest weakness,” says Raghavendra Reddy.

The spasm of excitement and the unrelenting news cycle around the Munugode bypoll must be seen in the context of the state’s own politics, where leaders were born of a rupture between the old and the new, and where political promiscuity is almost a given. A political party is not a bedrock of continuity in a new state—it is an edifice that floats across time, ever assimilating and repurposing elements. To borrow a Marxist adage, there are new conditions in Telangana today that have matured in the womb of the old society. Let the games begin.

BypollK Chandrashekar RaoKomatireddy Raj Gopal ReddypoliticsTelengana