BJP banks on past & caste to breach fortress Telangana

During the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP came second with four seats.

With the aim of winning 400 seats for the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), Prime Minister Narendra has been campaigning extensively across south India. Expanding the BJP footprint in southern states remains key to PM Modi's goal.

The PM had termed Telangana, India’s newest state carved out of Andhra Pradesh, the “Gateway for South India”. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the BJP posted a poor performance in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. It won only four seats in Telangana.

But this time, the party is banking on several factors to boost its seat share in south India beyond states like Karnataka.

Telangana’s past

According to a report in The Times of India, BJP wants to cash in on the region’s turbulent past centred around the last Nizam of erstwhile Hyderabad state, Mir Osman Ali Khan, and his reluctance to join the Indian Union.

Khan was known as a secular figure, but he was unable to control his militia. “Both the Left (Telangana had a strong communist presence in the 1940s) and the Right wing had fought against the Nizam and his private army, immediately after Independence. BJP methodically developed a narrative to present the fight against the Nizam as one by Hindus against Muslim rulers. During his recent tenure as BJP state chief, Bandi Sanjay could reach out to the youth with his rhetoric,” K Sreenivasulu, retired head of the political science department at Osmania University told TOI.

In a bid to strengthen its anti-Nizam stance, the Union ministry of Home Affairs has declared September 17 as Hyderabad Liberation Day. The day commemorates India armed forces' entry into Hyderabad in 1948 during Operation Polo. This led to Hyderabad’s integration into India. The BJP has accused the ruling BRS party of not commemorating the day.

Not a sudden entry

Over the years, the BJP has witnessed many ups and downs in the state. When the BJP contested with the TDP in the state's first assembly election in 2014, the party won five seats. In 2018, the alliance was broken and Raja Singh from Goshamahal was the only BJP legislator in the assembly.

However, in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the BJP made a comeback. It defeated then chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao’s daughter K Kavitha in Nizamabad. In the 2023 assembly elections, the BJP won eight seats. Despite the oscillations, the BJP vote share steadily increased from 10.5 percent in 2014 to 19.45 percent in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Even in the 2020 Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation election, the party increased its tally from 4 to 48 seats and emerged as the second biggest winner after the BRS.

Can BJP boost its prospects

According to BJP national OBC Morcha chairman, K Laxman, the party’s caste and social engineering may work in a state with 52% backward classes, 18% Dalits and roughly 9% minorities. Telangana has 17 Lok Sabha seats.

“BRS and Congress failed to accommodate backward classes in their governance, whereas TDP did to some extent in united Andhra Pradesh. PM Modi is the biggest backward class face. We accorded legal status with the national BC commission, and BCs in Telangana see the BJP as the best bet after BRS’s decline,” Laxman told TOI.

It is also said that the absence of multiple regional parties in the new state may favour the BJP. “With BRS dwindling in popularity and losing the 2023 assembly elections, it is obvious that the TDP vote bank converted to BRS would switch to BJP, and it will be an easy transition of votes; it will happen quickly and is already happening,” Kishore Poreddy, a BJP spokesperson told the newspaper.

The state will vote on May 13.