The South India Times
Spcl Correspondent
The ruling TRS (hereafter BRS) party being spearheaded by its founder and chief minister Kalvakuntla Chandrasekhar Rao must be heaving a sigh of relief after snatching the Munugode by-poll, but can it expect to repeat such a feat in all 118 assembly constituencies which go to polls in December 2023? That is the big question now. The Munugode horror of escaping from the jaws of defeat may continue to haunt the ruling party as its candidate managed to win with 10,000 votes. Many political analysts feel that the ruling party candidate could scrape through, thanks to the left parties whose support, of course comes for a price. Had it not roped in the Left parties and not spent huge amounts, besides engaging as many as 24 cabinet ministers as well as 50-plus MLAs, it would not have succeeded in its efforts. Can the ruling party engage such manpower in all the 118 (maybe barring 8-10 AIMIM) seats in the Old City)?
More than these, the major factor that the KCR party may be facing in the 2023 elections is in its new avatar as BRS (Bharat Rashtra Samiti) as well as the new party symbol it is going to get from the Election Commission. Whether one likes it or not, KCR’s woes get multiplied with his national agenda in his bid to challenge the magnetic appeal of Narendra Modi. Moreover, the future moves on the national political chess-board depend much on the decaying Congress and other strong regional satraps like the Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamul Congress (TMC), M K Stalin’s Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (DMK), or the Samajwadi Party of Akhilesh Yadav or Laloo Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD).
KCR may be banking heavily on former prime minister Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal (Secular) in Karnataka and MK Stalin’s DMK, besides the Nationalist Congress and Shiv Sena in Maharashtra, to help win a couple of assemblies and LS seats to get his new BRS party get recognition as a national party. Thus far, the future of BRS looks uncertain and this is a testing period for KCR. Added to that, at the back of his mind, KCR is also equally worried over the Central agencies like the ED, CBI and IT which may well crack a whip against his family members in several alleged graft cases including the multi-crore Kaleshwaram project, the Delhi liquor scam, in which according to some news reports the central agencies are closing in on KCR’s daughter as they took her aide into custody.
For KCR, the coming days may prove tough and challenging. He had to start his political battle afresh to spearhead his new party and get acceptance from the people, not only in his home state but elsewhere in the country. Does he enjoy the amount of clout that his friends among the regional parties like Mamata and AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal do? How he proposes to move from here on will be interesting to watch as Rahul Gandhi of the Congress has already declared that his party will have no truck with KCR’s new BRS, whatsoever. But, can his party’s new chief Kharge dare defy Rahul and ally with BRS before the upcoming state assembly polls? This appears unlikely. Will both the Communist parties join the BRS-led alliance in the state? What if the BRS’s alliance efforts with the Congress as well as the Left parties works out? How many of the 118 seats, his BRS can afford to share with its electoral allies? Will it be feasible and prove advantageous to the BRS? If such an alliance doesn’t work out what will be the fate of BRS? In sharp contrast, the BJP held three seats and the Congress two, while the Shiv Sena and RJD had one each. Though it lost to TRS in Telangana and gave the Shiv Sena a walk over Maharashtra, its victories over the RJD in Bihar and SP in Uttar Pradesh, and in Haryana, indeed appear remarkable underscoring the fact that the party had not lost its winning track.
For TRS, it may be a difficult task on hand to project itself as a national party, while it rode to power on regional sentiments. If one has to believe the videos that are trending in social media, including the one on how the liquor flowed in the constituency recording a record sale of Rs 170 crore in just two months – October-November – and those who expressed their gratitude brazenly before cameras of the local TV channels on why they chose to vote for TRS as they received Rs 5000-6000 from the TRS. Others alleged that some voters who were in Maharashtra were asked to come and cast their votes to help party win elections and that they were not compensated.
However, the BJP, which is determined to conquer Telangana in the next assembly polls in December 2023, needs to ponder over the trend of defections for short-term gains. The Munugode loss should be an eye-opener. Though Rajagopal Reddy might have given a fight, that is not good enough to add to the ‘brand value’ of the party. If at all it wanted to win on its strength and retain the brand image of a ‘party with a difference it should not, encourage defections from other parties.
