In the nearly 10 years that Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) supremo K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) has been the Chief Minister of Telangana, he has not faced any major electoral battles directly. While KCR effortlessly won the two Assembly elections that have been held so far since the state’s formation in 2014, the upcoming November 30 Assembly election is going to change that. This time, KCR will be facing not one, but two of his nemeses, including a former aide who fought alongside him for Telangana’s statehood. While KCR is confident of winning both the Kamareddy and Gajwel seats he is contesting, a loss might just change the state’s political scenario as it will witness the birth of a new major political figure, given that there has been no rival to KCR so far.
The situation is interesting as KCR is facing two top leaders from two different parties — Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee chief Revanth Reddy in Kamareddy and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Huzurabad MLA Eatala Rajender in Gajwel. In August, KCR surprised everyone by announcing that he will contest from the Gajwel and Kamareddy seats during a press conference. On the occasion, he also released BRS’s first list of candidates for the upcoming elections. The electoral fight got more interesting after both Opposition parties announced their candidates for the two seats.
While Revanth Reddy is a staunch critic of KCR, Eatala Rajender’s match against KCR for the Gajwel seat is more personal and interesting, as caste equations may have more weight there. Gajwel is likely to see a three-way contest, given that the Congress candidate T Narsa Reddy is sitting tight on the party’s existing vote bank. Eatala, who was with KCR during the Telangana statehood agitation from 2009 to 2014, was sacked from the cabinet by KCR in 2021 on allegations of corruption. He then resigned from the post of MLA, necessitating a by-poll, which went on to win it, delivering a slap on the face of BRS.
Revanth Reddy on the other hand, has been bitterly opposed to KCR, even before he joined the Congress in 2018. When he was the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) working president in Telangana, he was imprisoned in the 2015 ‘cash for vote’ scam for allegedly trying to bribe an MLA for his vote in the then Legislative Council elections. Observers believe that Kamareddy would have gone to the Congress had KCR not been contesting this time. In the 2018 state polls, BRS’s Gampa Govardhan won the seat with a little over 68,000 votes, while Congress’s Shabbir Ali lost the seat with 63,000 or so votes. Govardhan has been winning the seat since 2009, and was expected to face heavy anti-incumbency.
“Winning over KCR is not an easy task, and him contesting from Kamareddy will make a big difference for the BRS, as he is the face of the Telangana statehood movement. Voters will feel it is a privilege to have him as their representative, so it will change the politics not just in that seat but in the surrounding constituencies like Nizamabad,” said professor E Venkatesu from the University of Hyderabad’s Political Science department. He added that even in Gajwel, it is to be seen if Eatala will make an impact as the BJP has no base there historically.
In the 2018 state elections, KCR won the Gajwel seat with 1,25,000 votes (60.40%), while Vanteru Pratap Reddy of the Congress came second with 67,154 votes. BJP’s candidate Akula Vijaya got just 1587 votes, even lesser than the Not Any of The Above (NOTA) votes. In 2014, KCR vacated the Siddipet seat, which he had been winning since 1985, for his nephew and BRS Minister T Harish Rao, and chose Gajwel during the 2014 elections. KCR won the seat then with over 86,000 votes, while Pratap Reddy, the TDP candidate, came second with over 74,000 votes. The then Congress candidate Narsa Reddy came third with over 34,000 votes.
After the 2018 polls, Pratap Reddy joined the BRS, and the Congress has once again chosen Narsa Reddy, who had won the seat in 2009, as its candidate. The contest in Gajwel will mostly see a three-way fight, and Eatala’s candidature is what might cause a disruption due to his caste. Eatala belongs to the Mudiraj community, which is one of the numerically larger Backward Classes (BC) groups in Telangana. The Gajwel seat is believed to have one of the larger chunks of Mudiraj votes in any Assembly seat.
“While KCR has been undefeated so far, it is not an impossible task, as others like NT Rama Rao (NTR) have been beaten. We have a four-time MLA and a former minister contesting against KCR, so the options are open. We don’t know what the people of Gajwel are going to do,” said BJP’s chief Telangana spokesperson Krishna Saagar Rao. Another BJP functionary who did not want to be quoted however said that a win for Eatala is distant, as it is a “herculean” task.
The Gajwel seat has around 30,000 Mudiraj votes, and Eatala is expected to get a major chunk of it, according to BJP leaders.
Telangana has over 100 BC groups comprising a little over 50% of the state’s population. Munnuru Kapus, Mudirajs, Gouds, and Yadavs are considered to be the largest groups, with their population ranging between 10-20%. Munnuru Kapus are the largest in number, followed by Mudirajs, while Yadavs and Gouds in Hyderabad have been more affluent traditionally. Leaders from these communities do not see eye to eye.
Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and minority groups comprise 19%, 8%, and 14% of the state’s population. The Reddy community, which is a dominant caste group that has been the landed gentry for centuries, is believed to comprise about 6-7% of the population. Velamas, another dominant group to which KCR belongs, form the remaining population, along with Brahmins.
After Eatala’s ignominious departure from the BRS, political observers believe that the Mudiraj consolidation against BRS is likely to happen, especially since Eatala is seen as a big leader now. How much that will affect the BRS electorally is the question now. “There is no way we are going to lose, both in Gajwel and in Kamareddy. Eatala will certainly draw some Mudiraj votes, but that will be maybe 10,000 or 20,000 votes. KCR is more than confident of winning the seat, as the constituency has been developed in an unprecedented way. He won the Gajwel seat last time with a massive margin, even though the Congress and TDP were in alliance in 2018. Both the parties should have ideally had more vote share, but it didn’t happen,” said a BRS functionary who did not wish to be named.
As far as Kamareddy is concerned, the BRS leader said that the only reason KCR is contesting there is for a positive impact on surrounding seats like Nizamabad. For the Congress, a win in Kamareddy will change things for good. “Our campaign here had been halted for some days after the regular candidate Shabbir Ali was asked to vacate it for Revanth. We already had a good base here. Muslims form about 8% of the vote share, that is, around 12,000 votes, so we are trying to make sure that also stays with the party,” said a leader from the Telangana Pradesh Congress Party (TPCC) working with Revanth Reddy’s campaign.
If Revanth manages to defeat KCR and win the seat, he will be seen as a giant-killer regardless of whether the Congress wins or loses.
“In Gajwel, the Mudiraj votes may be crucial. Even though Eatala is contesting from Gajwel, does the BJP have a base there? Victory is not one-sided, as you have social category support, party, leadership and election manifesto, which are all important. Votes will certainly split because for as long as Eatala was in BRS, the Mudiraj votes were with the party. Now they will shift, as there is anger in the community over not getting a single seat from the BRS this time,” said Venkatesu.
Telangana goes to polls on November 30 and the results will be declared on December 3. While the BRS is looking for a hat-trick win, the Congress is hoping to snatch a victory, aside from also defeating KCR in one of the seats. In the 2018 elections, the BRS won 88 out of 119 seats, while the Congress and TDP, in spite of an alliance, won just 19 and two seats each. The BJP had managed to win just one seat in Hyderabad. If KCR does end up easily trouncing both of his opponents, then the Chief Minister will be one of the few personalities who has no rival in the state.
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