A 12 months after shedding energy to the Congress in Telangana, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), led by former chief minister Okay Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR), goes all out to regain its misplaced floor within the state and rebuild its picture amongst individuals.
The BRS, which dominated Telangana for 2 successive phrases because the formation of the brand new state in June 2014, confronted a humiliating defeat within the meeting elections held on November 30, 2023 by profitable simply 39 seats within the 119-member state meeting.
The Congress, which had simply 5 MLAs within the final meeting, got here to energy by profitable 64 seats. Its energy went as much as 75, by profitable another seat within the by-elections to Secunderabad Cantonment seat, apart from defection of 10 extra MLAs from the BRS.
Successfully, the BRS energy has been decreased to twenty-eight seats now. What’s worse, the get together suffered additional humiliation within the Lok Sabha elections held in Could 2024, throughout which the get together drew a clean — it couldn’t win even a single Lok Sabha seat out of the 17 seats in Telangana.
For KCR, who was reigning supreme within the state for almost 10 years, it was a giant setback. At one stage, he was projecting himself as a nationwide chief by stitching up a coalition of regional events throughout the nation and even rechristened his get together, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), as BRS.
He even established the get together community in numerous states comparable to Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and hoped to make it a nationwide get together as an efficient different to the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Get together.
However all his hopes have been shattered with the defeat of the BRS within the state meeting elections and regardless of his whirlwind marketing campaign throughout the state, his get together couldn’t win even a single seat within the Lok Sabha elections.
Within the final one 12 months, the BRS has misplaced a number of necessary leaders, together with veteran Rajya Sabha member Okay Kesava Rao, other than MLAs, who defected to the Congress. KCR has just about gone right into a cocoon, confining himself to his farmhouse. It has been almost six months since he has made a public look.
A number of scams that allegedly befell through the BRS regime within the final 10 years have come to mild up to now one 12 months, severely denting the picture of the BRS. They embrace alleged large-scale land dealings by the get together leaders utilizing Dharani portal, phone tapping of a number of politicians and even judges, grave engineering lapses within the development of Kaleshwaram carry irrigation scheme, irregularities in energy buy settlement with Chhattisgarh and monetary irregularities in awarding upkeep contract to Outer Ring Highway and funds in Method-E racing in Hyderabad.
The Congress authorities, led by chief minister A Revanth Reddy, has ordered inquiries into all these alleged scams and the investigation has been in progress for the previous couple of months.
Including to all these woes, KCR suffered yet one more shock with the arrest of his daughter and MLC Kalvakuntla Kavitha within the Delhi liquor coverage case in March and was launched on bail on August 26, after intense lobbying by the get together management in Delhi.
Despite receiving such an enormous drubbing within the elections and dealing with inquiries into the assorted acts of omissions and commissions, the BRS management has not misplaced its preventing spirit.
For the previous couple of months, the BRS has been taking on a number of agitations, highlighting the failures of the Revanth Reddy authorities. Whereas KCR is confined to the farmhouse, his son Okay T Rama Rao and nephew T Harish Rao have been relentlessly focusing on the Congress authorities and organising one programme or the opposite to maintain the get together seen in public.
Political analyst Ramakrishna Sangem mentioned that there was no possibility for the BRS however to come back again to the individuals and win their confidence. “They’ve been pushed to the wall and they should bounce again, in the event that they should survive until the following elections,” he mentioned.
He identified that the BRS has been attempting to whip up anti-incumbency among the many individuals by organising public protests over varied points, together with non-implementation of ensures promised to individuals, half-hearted implementation of crop mortgage waiver scheme, police crackdown on farmers at Lagacharla village towards pharma metropolis, demolition of homes alongside Musi riverbank, a collection of meals poisoning incidents in welfare hostels and colleges and suicide instances of weavers and debt-ridden farmers.
One other political analyst Md Zakir mentioned that the BRS management has nonetheless been below the phantasm that the individuals had made a giant mistake by voting the get together out within the final meeting elections. “The get together leaders, significantly KTR, has been telling the cadre that the persons are ready with vengeance to drag down Revanth Reddy and convey again KCR because the chief minister once more, forgetting the truth that there may be nonetheless 4 years’ time for the following elections,” he mentioned.
Secondly, in response to Zakir, the largest drawback for the BRS is that it doesn’t have any organisational construction, not like the Congress or the BJP. The BRS is totally a family-oriented get together and until KCR or his members of the family determine, no exercise is taken up at any degree, he added.
“It seems that the BRS is banking on a destructive vote towards the Congress, slightly than its personal energy. That’s the reason, the BRS leaders try to create troubles for the Congress authorities and hoping that their get together would profit from the errors of the federal government,” Zakir mentioned.
