Telangana: Karnataka upturns BJP-Congress contest for opposition space. But can either party beat KCR?

Which party is the ideal warhorse capable of beating KCR (Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao) in 2024: BJP or Congress? This brain teaser has been testing the political pundits in Telangana for quite some time but the question now is whether the poll outcome in Karnataka has queered the pitch for BJP.

In a recent informal chat with media, BJP’s senior leader Etela Rajendar reflected on the prevailing political mood and blurted out some “ground realities”. Asked whether his efforts to draw potential defectors from rival parties into BJP are yielding any result, Etela, who has been tasked with facilitating admission of leaders from other parties, said: “No one is willing to switch to BJP now. Instead, leaders whom I approached gave me reverse counselling, asking me to leave BJP and join Congress.”

Karnataka Spooks BJP

Cheered by a streak of electoral wins in Dubbak, Huzurabad and in the GHMC (Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation), the BJP has been orchestrating a powerful narrative to attract the anti-incumbency vote. The party has been saying the Congress has been edged out from the race and that it is only the BJP that is a viable alternative to the BRS. That hype sustained till the BJP lost power in Karnataka.

By advancing such a narrative, the BJP attempted to overcome organisational shortcomings in Telangana by way of encouraging defections from other parties. In order to preserve the morale of its ranks, the BJP top brass has been saying that the election result in Karnataka would have no bearing on neighbouring Telangana. However, history has shown some strong political correlations between Karnataka and the Telugu speaking areas.

In 1978 and 1989, two periods in which Congress was facing huge national headwinds, the party was able to win the state elections in both Karnataka and undivided Andhra Pradesh. In 1977, Indira Gandhi had burnt her fingers with her proclamation of Emergency in 1975 and her party was literally swept away in a Janata wave in the general elections. But people in Andhra Pradesh, under the leadership of Marri Chenna Reddy, and in Karnataka, under the helmsmanship of Devraj Urs, stood behind Indira Gandhi and ensured a decisive mandate. Similarly, in 1989, though Rajiv Gandhi was tossed out of office, both Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh elected Congress governments under Veerendra Patil and M Chenna Reddy respectively.

Congress’s Factional Demons 

The Congress suddenly found itself short of tall local leaders in Telangana after the bifurcation in 2014. YS Rajasekhara Reddy had groomed himself as a popular leader despite all the intra-party intrigues that sought to pull him down and helped the Congress come out of its 10-year political wilderness between 1994 and 2004, and stay in power for two successive terms since 2004.

But after YSR’s death in a chopper crash and the state’s bifurcation, the rudderless Congress has trusted TDP defector A Revanth Reddy to head the state unit, which only aggravated the infighting within the party.

A section of state Congress leaders have been attempting to conceal the self-defeating intra-party squabbles by fronting Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and asking her to contest from Telangana in the next general elections. In a bid to advance this plea, they cited the victory of Indira Gandhi from Telangana’s Medak in the Parliament elections in 1980.

Fronting Priyanka Against KCR 

The constituency situated close to Hyderabad saw a wide range of development marked by setting up of an ordinance factory, an Allwyn Nissan plant and construction of Singur dam across the Manjeera River by virtue of having a VVIP as its MP. The current move is obviously meant to spin the legacy of the Gandhi family to the party’s advantage and give it an elixir with an “Indira potion”.

The Congress leadership in Telangana is, meanwhile, busy trying to take a leaf out of its Karnataka playbook by focusing on ground level issues confronting the people at large. In the first week of May, the party organised a massive rally in Hyderabad enabling Priyanka to unveil a poll-eve “Youth Declaration” containing five major promises similar to the one in Karnataka on addressing joblessness.

Earlier, Rahul Gandhi at a Warangal meeting released a Rythu (farmer) declaration, aiming to address distress in the farm sector. The declaration promised concrete steps to end a spate of suicides by share croppers as a result of denial of financial assistance by the KCR government.

Besides, the party is trying to explore the prospects of a tie-up with YS Sharmila Reddy, founder of the YSR Telangana Party and daughter of YS Rajasekhar Reddy to avert a split in opposition vote. The attempt is also aimed at enlisting support from YSR admirers, consisting mainly of Dalits and Christians.

In a triangular setting, KCR seems to be sitting pretty basking under the possible split in opposition vote while the Congress hopes anti-incumbency will come to its rescue while the BJP is likely to end up as an insignificant third player.

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.