Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath are among the star campaigners that the Telangana Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) unit is planning to rope in for its campaign in the upcoming state elections. PM Modi has been reportedly earmarked to address more public meetings than Shah and even BJP national president JP Nadda.
According to a senior BJP leader from Telangana, Modi is likely to address meetings at Mahbubnagar, Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Adilabad, Nirmal and Nalgonda. According to the BJP leader, about 50-odd places in Telangana have been identified for public meetings that will be held over the span of the next three months for the polls. “These details, along with seat allocation for candidates for the 119 Assembly seats will be decided in the next 20 days or so,” he added.
Other senior leaders, including Chief Ministers and Union Ministers who are likely to be part of the BJP’s campaign in Telangana are Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis, Union Minister of State of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Shobha Karandlaje, Union Women and Child Welfare development minister Smriti Irani, and Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, among others.
The Telangana state elections are likely to be held in December. While the BJP will be hoping to do much better than in 2018, when it won just one out of 119 seats in the state, things however have not been going too well for the saffron party. So far, not one major political defector from the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) or Congress has chosen to join the BJP.
The latest defection was by sitting Malkajgiri MLA Mynampally Hanumanth Rao, who on September 23 defected from the BRS to the Congress. He was upset over his son Rohith Reddy not being given the Medak seat by the BRS leadership, and quit.
"Right now nobody is looking to join the BJP, and a few of our leaders may also leave if they don’t get tickets. The good thing is that there are no leadership issues as party president Kishan Reddy and (Huzurabad MLA) Eatala Rajender are getting along very well,” the BJP leader told TNM.
The BJP will also mostly contest the elections on its own this time as well. In the 2018 polls, the BJP’s long time poll partner, Telugu Desam Party (TDP), had formed an alliance with the Congress and other parties. The TDP was part of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), but its party supremo and then Andhra Pradesh CM Chandrababu Naidu quit the NDA over his state not getting ‘special category’ status.
As a result, the TDP and Congress joined hands but managed to only win 2 and 19 seats out of 119 respectively. The ruling BRS stormed to power by winning 88 seats and the BJP could only win one seat in Hyderabad (Goshamahal). The BJP has been trying to build up the perception over the last few years that it would replace the Congress as the main opposition party in Telangana. However, the BJP remains a second choice for anyone shifting sides, an indication of its low prospects.
“The BJP might take it easy this time for the elections. They will have to clearly assess where they can play hardball and give a tough fight. The BJP will not mind the BRS winning a third time, rather than letting a state slip into the Congress’s hands,” said analyst Palwai Raghavendra Reddy.