Sheikh Ahmed, 29, a project manager working in Oman has been saving up for 18 months -- not money, but vacation days.
Then, after elections were announced in Telangana, he took a month off; he has been in the state since early November, campaigning for the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS).
“I have return ticket for December 10. I will go back after the results are out,” said Ahmed, “I am campaigning in Nirmal district. We are telling our own stories to the voters. How the situation was before we left and how significant changes have come in the last nine years.”
Ahmed is not alone. A large number of NRIs with roots in Telangana have returned home during the poll season to giving an expat vibe to the poll campaign in India’s newest state that was curved out of Andhra Pradesh in 2014.
The effort is the brainchild of KT Rama Rao, chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao’s son and the IT minister of the state. Apart from an on-ground effort by volunteers such as Ahmed, the plan also has an online component, and NRIs from the state, now working and living in 52 countries are involved, said Mahesh Bigala, the coordinator of BRS’ “NRI Global Team” as it is called.
The team itself isn’t new and has been around since 2014, when the BRS (then the TRS) first came to power, in some form , this “is the first time, we are campaigning on the ground, doing door-to-door canvassing and talking to the voters about the development of the state in the past nine years,” added Bigala.
{{/usCountry}}The team itself isn’t new and has been around since 2014, when the BRS (then the TRS) first came to power, in some form , this “is the first time, we are campaigning on the ground, doing door-to-door canvassing and talking to the voters about the development of the state in the past nine years,” added Bigala.
{{/usCountry}}In the last poll, the NRI team’s role was confined to social media outreach, he said.
Another volunteer Harish Reddy Vyalla, 38, has his own start-up in Austin, Texas and Monday found him travelling through Karimnagar, once a stronghold of the Maoists . “It’s my home district. I left India in 2007. I came back three months ago. Apart from me, 50-55 NRIs have come back . We are doing door-to-door campaigns daily in this district,” he said over telephone.
Using the NRI workforce during elections is not rare in Indian politics. The Congress party in Kerala has branches in West Asian capitals such as Duba. In the 2017 Punjab elections, a number of NRI Punjabis from the US, UK, and Canada actively campaigned for Aam Admi Party. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made his interaction with NRIs a regular feature of his foreign visits.
The BRS has NRI chapters in 52 countries. “We coordinate on investment opportunities or help Indians . We helped the Telangana government bring back 600 people from UAE during Covid. We even installed a statue of late PM PV Narsimha Rao in Sydney in 2022,” said Bigala.