The general elections due in the next three to four months is likely to see the Congress and the BJP play a bigger role as national parties, eclipsing the regional satrap K Chandrashekar Rao’s BRS. In a way, it could be like the post-poll picture of Karnataka where the Congress pushed Deve Gowda’s JD(S) to the margins in its big fight against the BJP.
And, the outcome in Kamareddy tells how that big picture is likely to roll out.
BJP Shows Its Strength
The manner in which BJP’s little known candidate, 54-year old Katipalli Venkata Ramana Reddy, emerged as the dark horse in the Kamareddy race, has set the trend for such a shift in the political dynamics. Reddy humbled Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, the latter’s second defeat in his four decade-long political career, barring the initial fiasco which he suffered at the hands of his mentor-turned foe Ananthula Madanmohan of the Congress in Siddipet in 1983. KVR Reddy also shocked the new Telangana CM Anumula Revanth Reddy in the process. In a bid to draw political capital from this shock victory, BJP’s state party president G Kishan Reddy has proposed to make a 116 km voyage from Hyderabad to Kamareddy soon.
The BJP in Telangana has sprung a surprise by proving naysayers wrong, winning eight assembly seats with 13.91 percent vote share – four percentage points higher than its performance in 2018. The icing on the cake was K Venkata Ramana Reddy’s dramatic victory in Kamareddy.
BJP’s substantial gains in Telangana may pale before the saffron wave in the three Hindi heartland states—Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. But it’s clear that the saffron party is part of the big picture in the Southern state. Where it fell behind was the perception battle after the Karnataka elections.
Congress Revival
The Congress ruled undivided Andhra Pradesh that comprised Telangana for ten years between 2004 and 2014. Post-2014, it became an invincible fortress for TRS turned BRS. Since then, the two national parties began to play second fiddle to the BRS. The BRS debacle has made the Congress a force to reckon with in the south again, with two states under its rule.
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From those lows, Congress has bounced back, thanks to the firebrand A Revanth Reddy’s leadership. Rahul Gandhi also enjoys acceptability in Telangana, evident from crowds at his rallies. So expect the Congress to make a strong bid for all 17 seats in Telangana in 2024.
Why BJP Can Upstage BRS
Strikingly, BJP has made forays into North Telangana, the epicentre of the KCR-led statehood movement, since 2019. A complacent KCR failed to respond to the wake-up call in time. Until then, he was completely preoccupied with finishing off the Congress, thinking the saffron threat was still far away.
BJP capitalised on PM Modi’s charm and the communal divide in the Karnataka-Hyderabad region and the Hyderabad-Maharastra region in north Telangana, a legacy of Nizam rule. BJP’s four Lok Sabha seats in 2019 with 20 percent vote share was mainly from the northern region.
BJP also cashed in on the quota clash that pitted the Gonds, Koyas and the other adivasi groups in the forests against the plains tribes such as Lambadas. As a result, Soyam Babu Rao, a Koya leader with left wing extremist antecedents, defected to the BJP and won the Adilabad (ST-reserved) constituency in 2019. Later, the party cemented its base among tribals with proactive signals like sending Droupadi Murumu, a leader from the tribal community to Rashtrapati Bhavan, and fighting against religious conversions in the scheduled areas.
As is the case across the country, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi shouldered the burden of the party’s electioneering with an OBC CM pitch and a Dalit outreach programme through Madiga community leader Krishna Madiga.
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However, the gains the BJP made in Telangana are not enough to offset the loss of its southern bastion, Karnataka. In Andhra Pradesh, it has to invariably piggy-ride either of the regional players – the Jaganmohan Reddy’s YSR Congress of Naidu’s TDP, overtly or covertly.
It’s unlikely that KCR will bounce back by the time of national elections in a short span. The momentum is with Congress and BJP in Telangana and both these parties will be on an overdrive to claim that a regional party should not matter to a voter in national elections and they must not “waste” their votes.
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.
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