Can BJP win in Telangana?

Telangana: In the recent elections in Uttar Pradesh and other states, BJP has won 4 out of 5 states and retained power. Now it is time for the BJP to widen its horizon beyond the North Indian states and spread its wings in the South.

Edited By : Priyanshu Singh

Modified Date: November 29, 2022 / 07:45 PM IST

Published Date: March 17, 2022 3:51 pm IST

Can BJP break into KCR country with the victory in what is pegged as the semi-finals to the 2024 general elections. In the recent elections in Uttar Pradesh and other states, BJP has won 4 out of 5 states and retained power. Now it is time for the BJP to widen its horizon beyond the North Indian states and spread its wings in the South. If the party has to earn a country-wide appeal, it has to win South India. So far, Karnataka has been the only state where BJP came into power and is perceived as a strong party in the state, but its strength ends there. Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, and Telangana are the hardcore South Indian states. While BJP’s prospects in Tamil Nadu and Kerala are minimal, it has potential opportunities in the two Telugu states, especially Telangana. With the recent political developments in Telangana, it surely appears that BJP is taking KCR head on. However, the real question is – can the BJP put a formidable fight against KCR and win the hearts of Telangana people? KCR has many strengths to his credit – from his leadership to his party strength, to his native connect and credibility, all of which are foreign concepts to the BJP. Can BJP with its style of religious politics and nationalism beat KCR’s regionalism? KCR won the hearts of Telangana twice, and he is looking to score another big win for his third-term, most likely in 2023, if not earlier. Can BJP stop KCR from winning for the third time? Does BJP have what it takes to beat KCR in this most prestigious contest? Can BJP penetrate into south beyond Karnataka? Can it do this? Does it have what it takes to come to power in Telangana?

The political landscape in the state of Telangana is centered around Telangana separate state movement for over 15 years in the past. While the majority of those years went in establishing who is the real fighter that can achieve the dream of separate statehood for Telangana, Mr. K Chandrashekar Rao, the president of Telangana Rashtra Samithi was the front runner in that context up until 2014 and even won the trust of people and became the first chief minister of the separate state of Telangana. In spite of Congress party fighting the election with the narrative that they granted separate statehood to Telangana, people of Telangana rewarded the election victory to the fighter KCR than to the facilitator Congress. Since then, the Congress party struggled to cash in on the credit of separate state and tried many ways to discredit KCR and his movement participation, which was against the popular belief and it led to the continuous decrease of the voter support and the vote share of the Congress party decreased in every election after 2014.

While the first five years were seen has the honeymoon period for the KCR government, many of the government shortcomings are assumed as beginners mishandlings than as sheer incapability. While there were some good policies like Kalyana Lakshmi and Rythu Bandhu, there were several failed promises and disgruntled sections of the erstwhile Telangana agitation. Slow and steady anti-government sentiments were raising the heat against KCR. Sensing this, Mr. KCR called for an early election in December 2018, leaving the opposition unprepared. However, the opposition was overly confident that they would capitalize on the anti-incumbency.

While all the parties had over good three months’ time to campaign for the 2018 election, none of the opposition parties made wise use of that time. Instead, they ran around like headless chicken, finalizing seat sharing that dragged till the very last minute. The most fatal blow came to the opposition from KCR when the major opposition in Telangana, the Congress Party allied with Mr. Chandra Babu Naidu the then CM of Andhra Pradesh. This gave a perfect opportunity for KCR to reignite the Telangana sentiments that were rooted in anti-Andhra rulers. He used this gift spectacularly and turned the election context that was supposed to be about his government performance to the anti-Telangana policies of the opposition. What followed after that is a debacle to the principal opposition, the Congress party. The Congress barely won any seats. The BJP lost two out of three seats it previously held and had to settle with one seat. KCR once again proved that his credibility coming from the agitation days is a life saver for him any given day and there is no other leader that can beat him on the basis of that credibility.

The landscape of the Telangana politics used to be dominated by party politics for years. Initially it was the Congress party and the Communist party, later, joined by the Telugu Desam Party. The entrance of NTR, the movie star turned chief minister had introduced charisma politics of individual leader in the region and then continued by Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy of Congress. Both leaders have taken the politics beyond the party lines and reached to personal fan base. Then came KCR, the agitator whose 12 year long struggle for separate state made him a hero of masses and a cult like following has evolved for him over the course of the separate state movement. Till today, the politics of Telangana is defined as more of KCR-centric than the TRS or Congress or BJP centric. This is precisely the comparison-metric and number one factor that the voters consider on whom to vote. The people of Telangana look for one thing – can anyone match KCR?

Telangana Map

Lack of credible leadership made Congress irrelevant in the state in spite of having a base and consistent vote share of 18 percent. Same is true with the new found opposition party of Telangana, the BJP. There are few leaders who claim to be as good as KCR in the leadership. But, many fail to showcase their credibility and win public trust. Almost all front-runners in the BJP party rose to the high rankings by appointments and equations of the BJP as a party than by earning from public. From credibility as the movement front-runner to mesmerizing oratory skills, KCR emerges as a winner hands down. While Congress is experimenting with a leader that it loaned from the TDP, his past anti-Telangana activities are a huge impediment in the competition to beat KCR.

In the post 2018 elections scenario, the Telangana sentiment was no more the primary narrative and the people were back to evaluating KCR’s performance and policies. A survey conducted right before the general election 2019 had revealed that in spite of negative sentiment on KCR’s governance, he enjoys huge trust from the public as they were still seeing hope in him, despite his bad moves. The 2019 elections results is a clear indication that people are looking for a real opposition. Voters have given a some-what equal opportunities to both, the BJP and the Congress to question KCR. BJP had won 4 MP seats and Congress had won 3 MP seats out of the 17 seats in the state.

Even though the Congress performed well in 2019, they failed to capitalise on it. The deflection of MLA’s from the Congress continued to TRS. This deflection was initiated by KCR right after he came into power in 2014. This did not sit well with the public and they slowly moved away from the Congress and started to see the BJP as the main opponent to KCR. Four MP seats in Telangana is the best ever performance of the BJP and their vote share had bounced back. What was widely seen as a Hyderabad and urban-centric party, suddenly started garnering support even in the thickest forest regions of Adilabad. Since then, BJP is moving in fast pace. With the same enthusiasm, BJP had won the Dubbaka by-election. BJP went to the GHMC elections with real momentum and gave its best performance and stood second in seats tally. BJP is seen as it is at its peak performance. Deflections from Congress to BJP had increased. Even BJP was able to take away few key leaders from TRS, post this performance. As per people’s perception, the BJP scored big as an opposition. But in reality, its performance started to fall down. In the two elections after GHMC, the Nagarjuna Sagar by-election and the graduate MLC elections, the BJP’s performance was poor and it could not garner the continued support from public. The graduates aged between 25-40 are the most anti-KCR segment and are angry on him. This segment did not trust the BJP as an alternate and as a result BJP had not won even a single seat out of the three graduate MLC seats. Since then, the BJP hype started falling down. They also lost the Nagarjuna Sagar by-election and Congress started to gain some catch-all fall-back anti-KCR support. The BJP state leadership were running the cookie-cutter BJP style politics which failed to make any impact in the state.

BJP needed a narrative that is Telangana native, that has movement roots, that has wide acceptancy and most importantly that understands and represents the people’s anger. BJP’s leadership tried many different things but KCR is still the number one as there was no alternate to defeat KCR. After the debacle of graduate MLC election and while BJP was trying to live up to the people’s expectations, an unexpected turn came that redrew the election context, in the name of Eatala Rajender. Eatala Rajender was the number two in the TRS party, after KCR. He worked with KCR since 2003, led the separate state agitation from the front, acted as TRS legislative party floor leader between 2008 – 2014, and was a two-term minister in KCR’s cabinet. He deferred with KCR, walked out from the TRS and resigned to the assembly as an MLA. This had created a hurricane in Telangana politics. Until then, it was KCR vs. Congress, KCR vs. BJP, and KCR vs. all of the opposition. But after the resignation of Eatala Rajender, it had become KCR vs. Eatala Rajender – agitator vs. agitator, administrator vs. administrator, leader vs. cadre. For over three months, this narrative dominated the headlines. BJP jumped on the opportunity and invited Eatala Rajender to join them to fight KCR on the BJP ticket from Huzurabad. Since that point onwards the tables have turned for KCR.To defeat his former colleague, second-in-command, and comrade from the movement, KCR had left no stone unturned. From INR 2,000 crore development package to Dalita bandhu to shelling out INR 10,000 per vote to buy out voters. EatalaRajender’s approach was to bring all against KCR under one campaign. Being well versed with KCR’s style of winning an election with his Telangana movement style campaign, Eatala out performed KCR’s maneuvers and won the seat with a thumping majority.

Eatala Rajender may not have an RSS background and is a new entrant in the BJP. But he has the acceptancy among various sections of Telangana. He is not just a leader from the movement, but he is revered as the tallest OBC leader with huge winning prospects. He can not only win an election, but also groom winners in the party. His support base extends beyond the BCs to minorities, Dalits, and STs. He has wide popularity in North Telangana and with his new found victory in the by-elections, his fan base propagated to South Telangana too. The addition of Eatala Rajender to the BJP’s leadership gives a new dimension to its politics of Dharma. When combined, it can be a double-barrel weapon to win against KCR.

If BJP wants to win Telangana, they must replicate what happened in Huzurabad, state-wide. If BJP wants to win credibility, they have to follow the Huzurabad style of campaign. If BJP wants to defeat KCR, Huzurabad like path is the way and Eatala Rajender is the weapon. After all, who else knows KCR better and who else can beat KCR in his own game? Eatala Rajender can challenge KCR in credibility, agitation, administration, oration, and narration. Telangana is not far from becoming the second South Indian state to be run by the BJP.

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