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Telangana election 2023: KCR eyes 3rd term; Congress emerges as a key contender
Telangana's upcoming election on November 30 is set to be highly contested, with the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi facing challenges from the Congress and BJP. Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao hopes to secure a third term despite a resurgent opposition. The BJP has gained ground in recent local elections, while the Congress is buoyed by success in neighboring Karnataka. The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) is also expected to be strong in Hyderabad. Results will be announced on December 3.
The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will go into what is set to be Telangana’s most keenly contested election in its decade-long history, with the Election Commission announcing that the state will vote on November 30 and results will be announced on December 3.
Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao will hope to overcome a two-term anti- incumbency, and win for the third consecutive time. The challenge for him is a resurgent Congress and a BJP that can influence the outcome of the polls.
In the 2014 assembly elections, the BRS (then Telangana Rashtra Samiti, or TRS) won 63 of the 119 assembly seats, banking on its decades-long struggle for a separate state.
In his first term, Rao launched a clutch of welfare schemes such as the Rythu Bandhu, Rythu Bima, Kalyan Lakshmi and double bedroom houses scheme, as well as development programmes such as Mission Kakatiya (restoration of defunct irrigation tanks) and Mission Bhagiratha (bringing piped drinking water to every doorstep) and major irrigation projects.
Even as the opposition struggled with a leadership crisis, Rao sprang a surprise and dissolved the state assembly eight months early in 2018. The BRS won the 2018 elections even more resoundingly, winning 88 seats. The Congress won 19 and the BJP won just one. Over the next five years, 12 of the 19 Congress MLAs defected to the BRS. After some bypoll wins, the strength of the BRS has risen to 104 in an assembly of 119 seats.
But the fight appears much more intense this time around.
“I am sure the people are wise enough to decide who they want to elect,” BRS working president and information technology minister KT Rama Rao said on Monday. “The Congress leadership in the state is selling tickets to aspirants and if the party is voted to power, it will sell the entire state itself.”
Under the leadership of Bandi Sanjay, the BJP sprung a surprise in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections by winning 48 out of 150 divisions in 2020 and prevailed in two assembly bypolls in Dubbak in 2020 and Huzurabad seats in 2021. But since then, it has been roiled by infighting and factionalism.
Telangana wants a change, said state unit chief G Kishan Reddy. “The change is possible only with the BJP,” he said.
The Congress is buoyed by its electoral success in neighbouring Karnataka, as multiple disgruntled leaders from the BJP and BRS have jumped ship to the principal opposition, strengthening its district-level leadership. With political strategist Sunil Kanugolu helping the campaign, the Congress has also come up with six guarantees that they are taking to the people.
Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee (TPCC) president and MP A Revanth, while talking to reporters in Delhi said that the people of Telangana would get “liberation” from the misrule of the BRS after the polls. “All the people should come forward to liberate Telangana...,” he said in Telugu in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Among the other parties in the fray is the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), which has announced that it will contest in more than 40 constituencies, but is likely to be strongest in its old bastions of Hyderabad.
AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Monday said that he hoped that KCR will become Telangana’s CM again. Speaking to mediapersons after the Election Commission announced the poll schedule for five states, Owaisi said, “We hope Insha Allah (God willing) that KCR will again become the Chief Minister of Telangana.”
