K Kavitha: Breakaway Daughter

PAST MIDNIGHT, Kalvakuntla Kavitha was voic­ing her protest at Hyderabad’s Tank Bund, against anti-poor and anti-Ambedkar policies of the Con­gress government in Telangana, just like she did two decades ago while campaigning for statehood.

Back then, at 27, after her return from the US where she worked as a software engineer, she would wear a kur­ta and trousers, often camouflaging her identity, and take to the streets. It was during an interaction with people near Karimnagar, where her father K Chandrasekhar Rao or KCR was contesting, that a young woman told her that if she could get `1,000 a month, she would be able to send her child to school. “I was shocked. That was just about the cost of a pizza,” she says, recalling the days when she first stepped into the heat and dust of public life.

Life seems to have come back full circle. But this time she is campaigning against her father, fighting for political space in a state where three formidable parties—the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), Congress, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)— are already in the race. In the last Assembly elections held in 2023, BRS, which was in power for two consecutive terms, won just 39 of the 119 seats; Congress swept with 64 and BJP got eight, seven up from the previous election. “I will fight all three parties. They have all lost the regional flavour. My main fight will be against Congress because it is in power in the state, but that does not mean BRS or BJP is less of an enemy. I am floating a party on the 25th [of April]. It will be more Telangana-focused, which the state lacks,” says the former MP from Nizamabad.

Her recent statements that the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) name was now free to use, having been changed to BRS, have sparked speculation that she might use it to brand her party. “I will reveal the name on the 25th, but yes the TRS name is free to be used. Once the name was changed to BRS, it lost its core con­nection with Telangana,” she says.

Kavitha was suspended for “anti-party” activities in September last year, in a letter signed by her father, after which she resigned as an MLC. “There was no call, no show-cause notice, unlike the one given to a former BRS MLA, even though he was arrested on charges of using drugs. It was unfair treatment towards me. They say I indulged in anti-party activities. I raised pertinent questions concerning the party’s performance and detachment from people in a private letter to KCR. I don’t know what I did wrong. Maybe someday I will get an answer. Right now I am moving on,” says Kavitha, who has spoken to neither her father nor her brother, BRS working president KT Rama Rao (KTR), over the last 10 months although she does connect with her mother once in a while.

Kavitha, who spent over five months in prison after Central agencies booked her in connection with the Delhi liquor policy scam, told her father in a letter last May that he could have spoken more strongly against BJP during BRS’ silver jubilee celebrations at Warangal. She blamed the leak of the letter on a conspiracy within the party. In September, she made accusations that the CBI inquiry against KCR in the Kaleshwaram reservoir case was because of the corruption of her cousin Harish Rao, the former irrigation minister. She has also alleged that there have been repeated attempts by BRS to merge with BJP, a charge KTR has denied. “BRS may deny it officially. I have seen them working together on the ground in municipal elections,” she says.

The days in Tihar Jail were the “lowest” point in her life. “I was falsely implicated. It came as a death blow to my career as a politician. It was not easy. My younger son was in school. My elder son returned from the US. My husband was busy with law­yers. It has left a scar. After I came out, my father and brother shut me out. That only made things worse.” But, she says, seeing the suffering of the women who could not afford bail, hearing their stories and the tough time she herself faced in prison, has left her stronger.

As a daughter “sidelined”, she senses having borne the brunt of patriarchy. For Kavitha, politics was not the first choice, nor was it the second. She had other plans. She had not returned from the US to join politics, but when KCR resigned from the Manmohan Singh government as a minister, snapped ties with Congress and re-contested on the Telangana statehood plank, she got drawn into his campaign. She travelled one lakh kilometres. It led her to launch an NGO, Telangana Jagruthi, and she started working with women, the shepherd community, and tribals. “The more I went around regions of Telangana, I noticed the disparity, in­justice meted out to Telangana. I also realised that there were several movements, but there was a gap culturally,” she says. She brought to the fore celebrations of Bathukamma (life), an indigenous Telangana festival. She sees the impetus she gave to culture, dialect and festivals, bringing thousands of women out of their homes, as her greatest achievement.

Kavitha led protests demanding a statue of BR Ambedkar in the state Assembly, saying the inspiration to fight for statehood came from him. It was only ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls that she joined TRS, agreeing to contest from Nizamabad. Parlia­ment had passed legislation for carving Telangana out of Andhra Pradesh. The software engineer who wanted to run a world-class NGO won the election, as the TRS swept 11 of the 17 seats in Telan­gana. The activist became a politician. “Then came the restrictions on my movement outside my constituency. I didn’t see it then as a ploy to cut me down,” she says.

She lost the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Nizamabad to BJP’s Dharmapuri Arvind. Of the 17 seats, BJP won four, increasing its vote share by 9.19 per cent, which went up further by 15.54 per cent in 2024 when it won eight seats. Besides Congress and BRS, Kavitha faces the challenge of BJP’s increasing footprint. “We do not consider BJP to be a contender in Telangana. It is depending heavily on its nexus with BRS to gain political ground,” she says.

Outlining her party’s core focus she says, “This is another Telangana movement, in which I am fighting for social justice— for universal health, education, women’s representation and development with dignity. Our motto will be Telangana First.” Kavitha plans to persist with her demand for backward-class res­ervation in Lok Sabha and Assemblies. She has also been a votary of women’s reservation. On the question of increasing Lok Sabha seats, she says the contribution of southern states should reflect in their representation.

Ruled out of the succession race in BRS, she has set out on an ambitious mission, trying to carve a political niche for herself. At 48, she has age on her side. With Assembly elections still two years away, the state’s political battlefield is open for alignments and realignments. While BRS hopes for a return, banking on Congress’ “anti-incumbency”, BJP could consider replicating its Andhra Pradesh alliance with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Jana Sena. For Kavitha, the road ahead is long and challenging. As of now, she has taken up the gauntlet.