Hyderabad: Defeated and completely beaten, the K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR)-led Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) will now have to go back to the drawing board and rethink its plan for the future in Telangana if it has to survive, especially against a growing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BRS not just failed to win a single of the 17 Parliamentary seats here, but also saw its vote share coming down to just 16.68% in the just concluded Parliamentary elections.
Facing a defeat at the hands of the Congress in last year’s Assembly elections, and now in the Lok Sabha elections, BRS leaders however said the party will learn from its lessons and now focus on organisational strength. Moreover, with the party likely to see an exodus of its MLAs either to the BJP or Congress in Telangana, it is to be seen how KCR rebuilds, especially given that the party has always relied on the native Telangana statehood sentiment.
“We will just lay now and do our job as the main opposition. We have to make sure that we highlight and build on mistakes by the Congress and if we keep doing that until the next elections we should be fine. This is also how the Congress in Telangana worked and managed to beat us, and that is also what we need to do now. It is natural for our MLAs to defect,” said a BRS leader, who did not want to be named.
The BRS functinary also conceded that the party is facing an existential threat in the state, especially with the rise of the BJP since the last Assembly elections. In the 2023 state polls, the Congress won by securing 64 out of 119 seats, while the BRS came second with 39. The BJP, which got just one seat in the 2018 polls, managed to win 8 seats with a 14% vote share.
Though the BJP did not win many seats, it managed to gain deposits in over 40 Assembly constituencies of Telangana, indicating its rise. It also managed to eat into the BRS vote share, affecting the result in several places in the 2023 state elections. In the Lok Sabha polls, it managed to gain 35% of the vote share, a massive jump from the 14% it got in last year’s elections.
“Losses will be there. We lost the Dubbaka by-poll earlier, and then won the Nagarjunasagar by-election. If we were with BJP, why will we keep one of our crucial leaders like Padma Rao and B Vinod as candidates? We would have kept dummies,” remarked another BRS functionary from Hyderabad, when asked about AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi’s allegation that BRS candidates helped the BJP win seats in the Lok Sabha polls in Telangana.
“We had ignored our party affairs by focussing on governance. Moreover we are actually more secular than anyone else. What Asaduddin Owaisi is saying is a blatant lie. Why would our candidates ask their own voters to opt for BJP? This is a lesson for us. We should focus on Muslim leaders also unlike the old hands and should think beyond leaders like Mohd Mahmood Ali,” the BRS leader from Hyderabad told Siasat.com
He added that it became a Congress versus BJP situation in Telangana as national parties sold their narratives. “In other states regional parties succeeded. We are here 100%. Naidu went to jail and he still won. We are also prepared if both KCR and KTR are sent to jail as well,” stated the BRS leader.
