MUCH AGAINST THE spirit of democracy, former Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) did not personally hand over his resignation letter to Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan. On December 3, when it became clear that the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) was losing, KCR simply walked out of Pragathi Bhavan, his opulent official residence and camp office in the heart of Hyderabad, and asked one of his senior officers to submit the resignation letter on his behalf to the governor.
According to eyewitnesses, he asked his nephew and Rajya Sabha MP J. Santosh Kumar for a vehicle. He stepped into the car, leaving behind the security detail and government cars, and drove away with a handful of his associates. What would usually be a 20-car convoy, mostly consisting of Land Cruisers, was reduced to two modest private cars. As the sun set in the west, KCR retired to the east of Hyderabad, into his new life in his farmhouse. For the first time in four decades of his political career, KCR lost an election, trounced by a relatively unknown BJP leader in Kamareddy, the second constituency he contested. He was also edged out of the chief minister’s post by a much-younger rival, A. Revanth Reddy.
Those who met KCR at his farmhouse described his state as being “disturbed”, “dull” and “in disbelief”. The question of how people could overthrow someone who won for them a separate Telangana state and gave them more than a dozen welfare schemes seemed to trouble him. To lift his spirits, his close aides allowed a stream of visitors from his native village, Chintamadaka, which he had adopted as chief minister. The following day, he greeted more visitors with folded hands, knowing well that he had been relegated to just another legislator.
That night, a team of doctors from a private hospital rushed to the farmhouse after receiving an emergency call. As per the doctors’ diagnosis, KCR had a fall in his farmhouse, suffered a hip fracture, and was struggling to walk. The injured BRS is now struggling in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections scheduled in a few months. The doctors prescribed six to eight weeks of rest for KCR. But does the BRS have that much time to get back on its feet?
“There are two main challenges ahead for KCR. He has to strengthen the party structure and prepare for the Lok Sabha elections, which will be a litmus test for him,” said S.K. Zakeer, a senior journalist based in Hyderabad. “The foundation of the party is not just weak, it is literally invisible. From the beginning, KCR never concentrated on building a strong party structure from the grassroots. Before he came to power in 2014, the Telangana sentiment worked as a card, and he and his party triumphed in multiple elections without any proper cadre base. After he came to power, he made MLAs the whole and sole representatives of the party without having any active committees or strong local leaders in place. Many of these MLAs came from other parties and have no emotional bond with the BRS. If they leave, the party will fall deeper into crisis.” In the assembly elections, the BRS fell to 39 seats in the 119-member house.
Currently, Telangana has 17 Lok Sabha seats, of which the BRS has nine, the Congress three, the BJP four, and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen one. “The Parliament elections will be fought between the Congress and the BJP―with the Congress riding the assembly victory wave and the BJP riding the Modi wave. It is very difficult for the BRS to convince voters at this stage and win seats,” said Zakeer. Compared with the 2018 assembly elections, vote shares of the Congress and the BJP have gone up phenomenally this time.
Power CUT: BRS headquarters in Hyderabad wears a deserted look on counting day | PTI
For 69-year-old KCR, highs and lows in politics are not unfamiliar. However, he does not take kindly to electoral losses. In the 2009 assembly elections held in united Andhra Pradesh, the BRS (then Telangana Rashtra Samithi) won only 10 seats, having contested under the banner of a grand alliance along with the Telugu Desam Party. In the Lok Sabha elections held simultaneously, KCR won from Mahabubnagar with a slender margin of 20,000 votes. Disappointed with the results, he secluded himself and refused to engage in party activities. A few months later, however, he bounced back with his fast-unto-death protest, which ultimately led to the creation of a separate state.
For a party that wanted to emerge as an effective alternative to the BJP and the Congress at the national level, the road ahead appears difficult for the BRS. KCR’s game-plan was to try and win almost all the Lok Sabha seats in Telangana and a few seats in Maharashtra to increase the tally to at least 20 seats and become a formidable player on the national stage in 2024. It now looks like a distant dream. “When you (BRS) lost your own ground in Telangana, you won’t be making any big headlines during the Parliament elections. Had the BRS won the assembly elections, it would have been different,” said K. Nageshwar, former MLC and political analyst based in Hyderabad. “The political space for anti-BJP and anti-Congress groups is shrinking. The Aam Aadmi Party moved towards the INDIA bloc and the YSR Congress is with the BJP. Who will ally with the BRS since they lost the elections?”
Questions are also being raised about the very existence of the BRS. Between 2014 and 2023, the party encouraged defections. Around 38 MLAs from the Congress, the TDP and the YSRCP joined the BRS in those ten years. The result was that the TDP was wiped out in Telangana, whereas the Congress was at its weakest for years, having lost top leaders. Since opposition MLAs moving towards the ruling party has been normalised during the BRS rule, there is concern that the Congress could repeat the act. The Congress has 64 MLAs, just four more than the half-way mark, which makes it almost inevitable for the party to strengthen itself. Congress MLA and senior leader Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy said if the party wanted so, then the entire bloc of BRS MLAs except KCR and his family members would switch over. Recently, when KCR was in the hospital, BRS MLAs met at the party office and elected him as their legislature party leader.
The immediate job for KCR is to try and keep his flock together. “Revanth Reddy had tried to poach our MLAs while he was in the opposition. Since he is in power now, he may try that again,” said D. Shravan Kumar, senior BRS leader. “The BJP has tasted blood as its voting percentage has improved, and it may want to become stronger. But KCR is very strong and has not given up. We are confident that there will be no such environment where we will see our MLAs moving over to other parties.”