After months of speculation and infighting, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s central leadership (BJP) has announced that Union Minister and Secunderabad Lok Sabha MP G Kishen Reddy will be the new president of Telangana unit of the party. The incumbent party president, MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar, on Tuesday, July 4, resigned as the state president of the party. There is also speculation that Bandi Sanjay may now be accommodated in the union cabinet, while it is unclear if Kishen Reddy will continue to be the Union Minister for Tourism, Culture and Development of Northeast Region Development.
With this, the impasse between Bandi Sanjay and BJP Huzurabad MLA Eatala Rajender (who joined the BJP from the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi has finally ended. Rajender, according to BJP leaders, had been reportedly lobbying hard to become the BJP’s Telangana president. Rajender reportedly had the backing of other BJP leaders like himself who joined from the BRS and Congress in the recent past like Komati Rajagopal Reddy.
The question of who leads the party is crucial for the BJP as Telangana is likely to go to polls in December 2023. The BJP, which is aspiring to put up a tough challenge for the ruling BRS party has been severely impacted by infighting. Meanwhile, MLA Eatala Rajender who was also lobbying for the party chief’s role has been made the Chairman of Election Management Committee of Telangana.
Kishen Reddy has served as BJP party president twice- between 2010- 2014 when it was united Andhra Pradesh and from 2014-2016 as Telangana BJP President. After he joined the Janata Party as a member in 1977, he was BJP’s first MLA from Andhra Pradesh in 2004. Before becoming the BJP party head in the state, he was also the national president of the BJP Yuva Morcha. He won the Secunderabad MP seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, a year after he lost his Amberpet Assembly seat in the 2018 Telangana state election.
Bandi Sanjay is the Member of the Lok Sabha from the Karimnagar constituency, which he has been representing since 2019. He became the BJP Telangana chief in March 2020.