Karnataka Effect: Is BJP mulling a change of electoral strategy in neighbouring Telangana?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah.(File image)

In the run up to the Telangana state elections, due in the next six to seven months, the BJP had unveiled an ambitious roadmap for a long march in the south by making a giant leap from Karnataka to Telangana, the home turf of its arch rival K Chandrashekar Rao of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi.

Rethink After Karnataka?

In his April 23 rally at Chevella in Telangana, Union home minister Amit Shah, considered to be Number 2 in the BJP hierarchy, had said the countdown for the KCR regime has begun. In a move to trigger a consolidation of the Hindu vote, Shah stated that the BJP, if it would win the state elections, would scrap the four percent quota for Muslim minorities currently under implementation in education and employment. The quota was introduced by the then Congress government of undivided Andhra Pradesh headed by YS Rajasekhar Reddy in 2004.

But the Karnataka poll outcome has upset the BJP’s applecart. Its gateway to the south has been lost. The setback, which was mainly attributed to the common man’s bread and butter issues taking precedence over BJP’s core political strengths of aggressive nationalism and Hindu consolidation, has obviously got the party’s thinktank to do soul-searching over the workability of its core ideology on the soils of neighbouring Telangana.

Encouraged by the party’s amazing performance in the national elections in 2019, marked by four Lok Sabha wins out of 17 seats in Telangana with a 19 percent vote share, the BJP top brass had replaced the mild and sober K Lakshman with Bandi Sanjay Kumar, a hardcore RSS karyakartha and aggressive Hindutva campaigner, as the party’s state president.

BJP’s Internal Battles  

But the adverse Karnataka outcome has obviously cast a shadow on Bandi’s leadership. His campaign style focused on foregrounding Hindutva politics but this has been facing a challenge from intra-party “liberals”. Bandi’s rivals within the party have now begun to pitch for change of state leadership.

The BJP under Bandi’s leadership, since the last general election, has been building a strong narrative around the Hindutva agenda, hoping to mobilise Hindus behind it, citing how the majority Hindu population were treated as second grade citizens during the Nizam’s rule and subjected to atrocities by his private army called Razakars. The narrative paid rich dividends in the elections for Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) in which it finished second with 48 seats out of a total of 150, and won sparkling victories in the bypolls in Dubbak and Huzurabad.

Etela Rajendar, a TRS (now rebranded as BRS) turncoat with a left-wing extremist background, one of BJP’s prized imports, was summoned to Delhi a few days ago by Amit Shah, apparently to mull over a recalibration of the party’s strategies in the poll-bound state. Etela, who served as a senior cabinet colleague in the KCR government before he rebelled against his mentor and switched sides to the BJP, is considered by some sections within the party as an alternative to Bandi for his liberal views. There are those in the BJP who believe that his popular base, which he has assiduously built from the statehood movement onwards, could help the BJP emerge as a viable alternative to the ruling BRS.

Can BJP Surpass Congress, Counter KCR?

In many areas, BJP is hobbled by the absence of a party organisation and popular homegrown leaders. After the initial burst of optimism fuelled by the bypoll wins and the GHMC performance, it is apparent that BJP faces a daunting task. The nationalism narrative alone appears inadequate to take on KCR, who is firmly rooted in regional sentiment.  In the absence of leaders with a local appeal to match KCR’s stature, Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have to fall back on his own image and seek votes for his party to power in Telangana, but that is the same tack which failed in Karnataka.

The saffron party, in addition, is lacking in another key department. It is yet to gain the confidence of the public that it is capable of edging out the Congress as the main opposition and thereby unite opposition votes against KCR. This is a key factor that is becoming evident amid speculations around party hoppers leaving the BJP in pursuit of greener pastures in other parties, especially the Congress which has won a sort of perception battle after it swept the Karnataka polls.

The outburst of senior leader Konda Vishweshwar Reddy, a defector from TRS and Congress, has reinforced such a public perception. Reddy, the ex-MP from Chevella, told media that the BJP has lost the perception battle as a serious rival of KCR’s party after failing to get Kavitha Kalvakuntla, KCR’s daughter, arrested in the Delhi liquor scam.

The triangular fight in the offing between the ruling BRS, the Congress, and the BJP is also going to be a battle of their respective narratives. Before the Karnataka elections it would have been the regional identity of BRS versus Congress’s Bharat Jodo versus the BJP’s Hindutva pitch. Now following the Congress’s success in Karnataka with welfare pitches and raising localised issues, expect all three parties to shout from the rooftops on local issues. It has to be seen which of the competing narratives will sell with the nearly three crore voters of Telangana.

Gali Nagaraja is a senior journalist, formerly associated with The Hindu, The Times of India, and Hindustan Times for over three decades. Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.