Telangana: A tough test for patriarch of the youngest state

The people of Telangana voted overwhelmingly for K Chandrashekar Rao, popularly known as KCR, and his party in the last two assembly elections, acknowledging his role in leading the movement that led to the birth of the youngest state of the country. But as the state is going to elect its third legislative assembly, the ‘Telangana Bapu’ is now facing a tough test.

The November 30 polls are poised to be a litmus test for KCR’s Telangana Rashtra Samithi, which has now proudly rebranded as the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS).

KCR quit the Telugu Desam Party and resigned as the deputy speaker of the legislative assembly of the then-united Andhra Pradesh on April 27, 2001. He launched the TRS on the same day, with the sole objective of carving out a separate state from Andhra Pradesh. He passionately argued that the people of Telangana were enduring systematic discrimination within undivided Andhra Pradesh and creating a separate state was the only solution. A couple of months after it was launched, the TRS first tasted electoral victory when it won one-third of the Mandal Parishad Territorial Constituencies and one-quarter of the Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituencies in Siddipet. KCR’s fast unto death in 2009 whipped up emotion and added new momentum to the movement for the creation of the new state.

The highest point in the TRS’s journey came in June 2014, when the dream of three crore people came to reality and Telangana came into existence as the 29th state of the country. KCR etched his name in the annals of the history of Telangana as his party won 63 of the 119 constituencies in the first election of the state in 2014 and he took over as its first chief minister. He led his party to a bigger victory in the 2018 polls, winning 88 seats in the state assembly.

KCR last year dropped Telangana from the name of his 21-year-old party and rechristened it as the BRS – making public his intent to play a bigger role in national politics.

But the sudden rise of the BJP just months after the 2018 assembly polls and the resurgence of the Congress in the past few years are posing a stiff challenge to the BRS on its home turf itself.

The BJP managed to win just one seat in the 2018 assembly polls in Telangana but won four of the 17 Lok Sabha seats from the state in the 2019 parliamentary elections. It registered an impressive performance in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation polls, by winning in 48 of the 150 wards. The saffron party also had back-to-back successes in the bye-elections held in Dubbaka and Huzurabad assembly constituencies of the state.

KCR stayed away from the I.N.D.I.A, which emerged earlier this year after 28 parties came together to take on the ruling BJP in the 2024 parliamentary polls. He had earlier floated the idea of a federal front to take on both the BJP and the Congress, but it hadn’t taken off. He visited Patna, Delhi and Kolkata to seek support from Nitish Kumar, Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal the chief ministers of Bihar, West Bengal and the National Capital Territory, to rope in Janata Dal (United), Trinamool Congress and Aam Aadmi Party.

But as he is now facing challenges from both the Congress and the BJP in Telangana, no leader from outside the state came to campaign for his party.

The BRS has been trying to whip up the Telangana sentiment once again and playing up the state’s self-respect plank to outwit the BJP and the Congress, which it has been portraying as the ‘parties from Delhi’. The party is also pinning its hope on the welfare schemes launched by its government, like Rythu Bandhu for farmers, Dalitha Bandhu for Dalits and Mission Bhagiratha.

If the BRS wins the state assembly polls for the third time, it will not only consolidate KCR’s position but will also pave the way for a seamless leadership transition to his son, K T Rama Rao, and nephew, T Harish Rao. A defeat on the other hand will put the party in the most challenging crisis in its 22-year-long history.

That is perhaps why KCR, now 69, has been on a whirlwind tour across the state, addressing at least five election rallies. If he can lead his party to retain power in the assembly elections this year, KCR will have his third straight term in the office of the chief minister – a feat that even the legendary southern leaders like M G Ramachandran, NT Rama Rao and J Jayalalithaa had not been able to achieve.