Telangana: Congress, BJP vie to emerge as main challenger to BRS

Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao exercises great care in choosing his words. A week after the Karnataka election results were announced in May this year, his advice to party men not to get “perturbed” by Congress’ landslide victory in the neighbouring state was not lost on the political players on either side of the fence, and the fence-sitters.

Notwithstanding the jubilation in the Congress rank and file triggered by the positive vibes blowing in from the Hyderabad-Karnataka region, the grand old party’s revival in Telangana was always going to be an onerous task, especially when it held the dubious distinction of having lost the state despite having created it at a great political cost.

The silver lining for the party was its ability to retain 28% to 30% of base votes even in the worst of times.

But electoral politics is not just about a leap of faith. Posing a credible challenge to a well-entrenched Bharat Rashtra Samithi in this election would require a huge leap in vote share as well, especially when the vote difference between the two parties was 19% and 12% in the last Lok Sabha and assembly polls respectively. Having been out of power for 10 years now, the Congress has also conceded political space in the urban centres where revival would be slow and arduous.

However, the Congress’ quest to regain Telangana received an unexpected fillip as the BJP rolled out last-minute alterations in its election strategy. With nearly 20% votes and four Lok Sabha seats in 2019, the BJP had been trying to emerge as the main opposition to the BRS. Projection of Backward Class leadership including the appointment of Karimnagar MP Bandi Sanjay – a trenchant critic of KCR – as state president was done in the same vein.

Sanjay’s removal earlier this year and other organizational changes like the nomination of union minister G Kishan Reddy as the BJP’s state unit president and appointment of Etela Rajender, who quit the BRS to join the saffron party, as campaign management committee chief gave the Congress another opportunity to dub KCR’s party as “the BJP’s B-team”. It accused the KCR family of being in collusion with the ruling party at the centre.

The Congress has since sought to emerge as the main challenger to the BRS and hence the primary repository of the votes against the ruling party in the state. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has in his campaign accused the KCR family of administering Telangana like their fief, an imagery that welds with the state’s long history of anti-feudal movements. ‘Doralu’ (landlord) vs ‘prajalu’ (common man) binary is an attempt to draw an equivalence with the traditional class conflicts.

The objective is to minimize division in anti-establishment votes. The Congress is keen to emerge as the main challenger to the BRS and wean away anti-establishment votes across the spectrum, with a special emphasis on stitching a winning combination comprising of the Dalits, tribals and Muslims glued in by the politically influential Reddy community.

The fight for Muslim votes has also got interesting. The gloves are off as Rahul Gandhi has accused Asaduddin Owaisi’s AIMIM of taking money from the BJP to field candidates against the Congress. Taking the battle to Owaisi’s den, the Congress is attempting to consolidate minorities outside of Hyderabad.

While five states are going to polls, Telangana is perhaps the most crucial. An opening here gives the BJP another toehold in the south after Karnataka.

For the Congress, a positive outcome in Telangana will give the party and its allies a leg up in the more than 130 Lok Sabha seats in the five southern states. It will also give the Congress a bargaining chip within the I.N.D.I.A. alliance to seek a better deal in seat sharing for the Lok Sabha polls.