How Congress stormed the BRS stronghold in Telangana
THE Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), formerly known as the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), suffered a shocking defeat at the hands of a resurgent Congress in the Telangana Assembly elections. It was evident for some time that the K Chandrashekar Rao-led party was fighting a tough electoral battle. But expectations were that the BRS would somehow manage to retain power.
There were reasons for this expectation. The TRS government administered one of the largest packages of freebies to the people soon after the state was carved out of Andhra Pradesh in 2014. The new state was blessed with a revenue dividend as it accounted for almost 60 per cent of the undivided state’s revenue while having only 40 per cent of the parent state’s population. Rao used this surplus to roll out attractive freebies, which included an annual agricultural incentive of Rs 8,000 per acre.
The goodwill the TRS enjoyed in view of its pivotal role in the Telangana statehood movement peaked in 2018 after Rao called early elections to the Assembly. The party secured an impressive vote share of 46.87 per cent. Its nearest rival, the Congress, was left far behind with a vote share of 28.43 per cent. The TRS’s vote share represented an increase of almost 12 percentage points over the 34.54 per cent vote share it had secured in the 2014 elections.
However, it has faced a series of electoral and political reversals ever since. The first setback came in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The ruling party’s waning popularity was evident as it won only nine seats out of 17. In December 2020, the party suffered a jolt in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections, losing more than 8 per cent popular votes and dropping to 56 from 99 seats it had won in the previous elections in 2016. Subsequently, there were Assembly bypoll reversals, too.
A ground survey revealed that the fundamental problem was the declining goodwill that the BRS commanded. Rao’s government had launched several ‘feel-good’ freebie schemes. Though these schemes were very attractive, their political shelf life was fast expiring. Faced with these problems, the ruling party had to work on a couple of critical fronts. It had to stitch together a social/caste coalition to build a credible and reliable support base — a kind of a vote bank. The party has lacked it as it had drawn support from all sections initially when it led the Telangana movement. Besides, at the governmental level, Rao had to launch a second wave of freebies to curb the estrangement of poorer social groups from his party and the government. But Rao’s initial set of freebies was so extensive and costly that there was hardly any fiscal space for more of them.
With an impressive performance in the GHMC polls, the BJP appeared more than ready to fill the political space that Rao was beginning to lose. The saffron party won 48 seats in the corporation and cornered a vote share which was just a fraction lower than that of the ruling party. The saffron leadership appointed Karimnagar MP Bandi Sanjay, an OBC face, as the state party chief. Under Sanjay, the BJP tried to win over the OBCs and Dalits, who constitute almost two-thirds of the state’s population. In the midst of these churnings, the state Congress was nowhere in sight. All the party had was a dynamic leader in A Revanth Reddy, the state Congress president.
A BRS-versus-BJP battle was beginning to take shape on the ground, with the Congress in danger of being relegated to a distant third. This wasn’t the kind of triangular contest that would guarantee a third term for Rao. The preferred three-way contest for the BRS boss involved a scenario where the BJP would be confined to battling the Congress for the second position.
Around eight months before the polls, Sanjay faced challenges within the state BJP. Simultaneously, he faced accusations of involvement in a school exam question paper leak. He had to secure bail after being arrested by the state police. His son was alleged ly involved in a brawl. And a couple of months later, with the elections approaching, the party leadership removed him and brought Union minister and Secunderabad MP Kishan Reddy back as the state unit president. Politically, his return symbolised the resurgence of the powerful Reddy community in the BJP ranks, a development that did not go well with the over 50 per cent OBCs, who were looking at the BJP to make their way up the leadership ladder in the state.
Amidst turmoil in the BJP and the state government’s offensive against Sanjay, the voters appeared to have turned towards the Congress. With a convincing Assembly victory in the neighbouring state of Karnataka infusing confidence, the state Congress, under Revanth Reddy, launched an aggressive campaign. Within weeks, public perception changed, with the Congress emerging as the party capable of defeating the BRS. Ultimately, it succeeded in ousting the BRS.
Expectedly, Revanth Reddy has been chosen to lead the state government. The Congress’ victory in this southern state could be a great opportunity for the party to reinvent itself in the state and in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, the two states in which it was routed in 2014. But with a slender majority in the new Assembly, the Congress will have to first focus on achieving intra-party unity — this will be a prerequisite to providing a stable government. For the BRS, the road to recovery could be long and arduous.
