How Revanth Reddy won a battle of personalities against KCR

IN JUNE, REVANTH REDDY laid out a virtual trap for Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao. At a public meeting in Hyderabad that bigwigs of the state Congress attended, he thundered: “I am throwing you a challenge, Chandrashekar Rao. You have 104 MLAs, and if you are a real man, give tickets to all sitting MLAs. If you have confidence in your leadership, do it.”

Revanth’s challenge was less a political rant and more a strategic move. For the next few months, the state Congress president’s challenge kept popping up from the party’s camp.

In August, three months before the assembly elections, KCR took the bait. In a show of overconfidence, he announced that he was giving tickets to almost all the sitting MLAs. The result―the BRS was reduced to 39 in the 119-member assembly.

A section of party leaders is still baffled about why KCR undertook this suicide mission; they knew that half of the MLAs were facing severe anti-incumbency.

Revanth’s challenge probably had its roots in the findings of Indian Political Action Committee, Prashant Kishor's consultancy firm. Last year, I-PAC worked closely with the BRS before they parted ways; the party wanted to focus more on its national ambitions. “Our reports showed that the majority of MLAs would lose if there was an election held immediately,” said a former I-PAC employee. “We gave the feedback to the party leadership last year, but they never acted on it.” In the internal meetings, KCR is said to have admonished legislators and had told them to get their act together.

A highly placed BRS source said that, just before KCR announced that he would go with the sitting MLAs, his son and BRS working president, K.T. Rama Rao, asked him to reconsider. “He tried his best to change KCR's mind,” said the senior leader. “But KCR is not one to swallow his pride. For him, changing the candidates meant submission and acceptance of failure. As it is, he is a risk-taker. This time, like always, he thought his image and aura would win the voters over.”

Evidently, this was one of the biggest factors that sank the BRS―11 of the 14 new names won, exposing severe anti-incumbency against the sitting MLAs.

In some way, these elections were a battle of personalities. KCR, blessed with a great political brain, took on a much younger and aggressive Revanth, who is known to make all the right political noise. In the first candidate list announced in August, KCR nominated himself from a second seat, Kamareddy, in north Telangana. This was apart from his traditional seat of Gajwel. Revanth spotted an opportunity. He got the Congress high command nod to take on KCR there. It was his second seat, too, the other being Kodangal. “By contesting in Kamareddy, Revanth was put on the same pedestal as KCR,” said Telakapalli Ravi, senior political analyst from Hyderabad. “As the Congress high command also supported him, it looked like they were sending out a message on who their chief minister candidate was.”

This move put pressure on the BRS in Kamareddy. “Initially, we thought it would be a cakewalk,” said a local BRS leader who did not want to be named. “But after Revanth’s arrival, there was some tension. KTR was made in-charge of the constituency, and he started going deep into the villages to campaign, just to ensure that they get more votes than Revanth.” Though the BJP’s K. Venkata Ramana Reddy won from Kamareddy, the spotlight was on KCR's defeat and the rise of brand Revanth.

That a two-year-old song sung specifically for Revanth―'Mudu Rangula Janda'―became the Congress's anthem for these elections was a clear indicator that the party wanted to project him as its face.

For his part, in the run-up to the elections, Revanth shed his image of not being a team player. He worked closely with Congress strategist Sunil Kanugolu, who conducted surveys and suggested winnable candidates to Revanth. The biggest win for this duo was the induction of former BRS MLA Mynampally Hanumanth Rao and his son, Rohith. When the BRS denied Rohith a ticket, Revanth was quick to swoop in and bring the duo into the Congress. He even ignored his party's decision to give only one ticket per family and took them to Delhi to get their names on the list of candidates. The result―Hanumanth Rao lost in Malkajgiri, but Rohith, 26, became the youngest MLA in Telangana by defeating veteran BRS leader Padma Devender Reddy in Medak.

Also, when BJP national executive committee member Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy and BJP’s manifesto committee chairman Vivek Venkataswamy returned to the Congress, Revanth made sure it was a smooth process despite sharing bad blood with them.

Days before the elections, Revanth pulled off one last trick to score brownie points with the high command. He announced that a Congress chief minister would take oath on December 9, on Sonia Gandhi's birthday, which also happens to be the day the formation of Telangana was announced. However, as the Congress was in a hurry to form government, the swearing-in was advanced to December 7.

At the Ellaa Hotel in Gachibowli, where all the Congress MLAs were put up after the results, each MLA was called upon to name their choice for chief minister. Unsurprisingly, most of them reportedly took only one name―Revanth Reddy.