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Southern Lights | Bharat Rashtra Samithi’s existential crisis
While the party is making attempts to be more visible, KCR’s failing health and alleged family rifts have led to the cadre feeling disenchanted
Bereft of power and impaired by an unresponsive electorate that failed to reciprocate the Telangana statehood sentiment during the state and general elections, leaders of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) party are seeking a new narrative that could glue the party and its cadre together.
Party founder and supremo K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR), his son and working President KT Rama Rao, and his nephew T Harish Rao have been engaging with leaders across ranks seeking feedback to formulate a course of action, party leaders who asked not to be named said.
“Ultimately, regional parties are all about the family. So, even in the BRS, everyone is rallying around KCR looking for a sense of direction. We need a strong narrative, something better than being just an alternative to the BJP and the Congress for our party to stay the course,” a senior leader close to the family said.
This senior leader HT spoke to said many leaders have stopped going to the Telangana Bhavan, the party’s headquarters in Hyderabad’s Jubilee Hills after the party scored a zero in the Lok Sabha elections and was reduced to just 39 seats after having more than 100 MLA in its second term from 2018 - 2023. The reticence of the senior leaders to openly criticise the ruling Congress also comes from their fear of being targetted by current chief minister Revanth Reddy and his dispensation.
With nearly a dozen MLAs, MPs, and MLCs switching to the BJP and to the Congress from the BRS since the state elections concluded last November, the party is looking to arrest the transfer of cadre to other parties. It is perhaps the first time the party is facing such an existential crisis after it was formed in 2001 with the sole purpose of achieving statehood for Telangana.
Far from the farmhouse
KCR has been actively seen engaging with party cadre, departing from his ways of inviting leaders to his farmhouse at Gajwel, his constituency. “The old ways of aggression and arrogance have petered down. He is amidst people now and is listening to their issues” said the BRS leader quoted above.
KTR, ostensibly second in command has also been responding to the Congress party’s charges on the Kaleshwaram dam issue. Soon after multiple exits from the party, KTR visited the Medigadda barrage along with a number of former ministers- the move being seen as a show of strength by the BRS.
While the party is making attempts to be more visible, KCR’s failing health and alleged family rifts have led to the cadre feeling disenchanted. Charges of tapping the phones of Congress leaders, his colleagues, and the faulty construction of the colossal Kaleshwaram dam that cost the state exchequer ₹1 lakh crore have all dented his image as the deliverer of Telangana.
At a party plenary function in April last year, KCR himself boasted of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi sitting on a fund of ₹900 crore, perhaps the highest for a regional party in India. However, the same leader at a party gathering in Nalgonda after the Lok Sabha election and subsequent defections from his party equated his former colleagues to being “sunflowers” who would turn in the direction of the Sun, taking a jibe at them for siding with the Congress that is ruling Telangana.
Demoralised cadre and impending panchayat elections
KCR and KTR have an uphill task of motivating their cadre for the panchayat elections to be held in a couple of months from now. But with the senior leaders, particularly the family failing to arrest defections, several questions are raised if the cadre will continue to remain with the party if there’s a poor show at the rural body Zilla Parishad and the Mandal Parishad elections.
The first signs of a depleting workforce came after KCR’s daughter and BRS leader K Kavitha’s arrest in March. Later, after the no-show at the Lok Sabha election, KCR’s party and governance style has been under within and outside the party. Soon after Kavitha’s arrest, shutters went down on the Telangana Jagruti Samithi, the cultural wing of the party that Kavita headed. Offices of the BRS in neighbouring states - Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Orissa were also closed down after many senior leaders in the party felt it was time to put TRS’ national aspirations on the back burner.
“Today’s electoral setback is certainly very disappointing. But we will continue to toil and will rise from the ashes again like a Phoenix,” KT Rama Rao said after the election. The upcoming panchayat elections litmus test for the BRS. An unimpressive performance would only mean exits at the district level.
Political commentator Susarla Nagesh who has tracked syatelections closely from the 1970s said, “The BRS is clearly clutching at the straws. It is only the media that is keeping it alive. From the Kaleshwaram project issue to the Delhi liquor scam, everything that they’ve done is coming into question. They need to reinvent themselves, else they the risk of being reduced to a kingmaker with just 12-15% seats like what the JDS is in Karnataka.”
If what the Congress leaders say is anything to go by, more leaders are willing to quit BRS. However, it is understood that Congress leaders objected to more people joining simply because the Congress party has little to offer the defectors.
But the Congress alone is not BRS’ problem a rising BJP is. Equalling the ruling party’s tally in the Lok Sabha elections with eight seats, KCR and his team would be wary of the BJP’s preparation in the panchayat elections. Sweeping northern and central Telangana, the saffron party is deepening its roots in the state. This was indicated by political strategist Prashant Kishor as well. Many BRS leaders who severely criticised Kishor for his comments on the party are having to eat crow given BRS’ current situation.
At one of the media conclaves, Kishor said, “If I am a leader from BRS, I would definitely be worried. whatever may be the gain of the BJP in Telangana will be a threat to BRS’s existence. To simplify… BRS will face existence crisis after the Lok Sabha election.”
Once previously, the BRS, then called the Telangana Rashtra Samithi, had faced a similar, though less severe political situation. In 2009, after the Lok Sabha elections, it won just two seats - KCR, and the other winner being actor-turned-politician Vijayashanti. But with Vijayashanti moving to the BJP and then the Congress last year, and KCR himself losing one of his assembly seats and choosing not to contest the parliamentary election, the party’s position is precarious.
Deepika Amirapu is a freelance journalist based in Hyderabad. Each week, Southern Lights examines the big story from one of the five states of South India.
