The current chief minister of Telangana and leader of the incumbent Bharat Rashtra Samiti party (BRS, formerly TRS), K Chandrasekhar Rao has grabbed national headlines with a “mega” meeting held in Telangana, in the presence of the following Opposition leaders: Aam Admi Party’s (AAP) Arvind Kejriwal of New Delhi and Bhagwant Mann of Punjab, Samajwadi party’s (SP) Akhilesh Yadav of Uttar Pradesh, Communist Party of India-Marxist’s (CPI-M) Pinarayi Vijayan of Kerala and the Communist Party of India’s (CPI) D Raja.
Interestingly but not surprisingly, the leaders of these “secular” and communist parties flagged off the meeting with a temple visit of the popular Yadadgiri Lakshmi Narasimha temple, before their travel to the meeting venue in Khammam town, in a border district of Andhra and Telangana.
In October of last year, at the time of transforming his regional TRS party (Telangana Rashtra Samiti) to a pan-Indian BRS party (Bharat Rasthra Samiti), K Chandrasekhar Rao had stated his ambition of going national and his vision of forming a national politicial alliance among Non-Congress, Non-BJP parties.
This is Rao’s first major meeting held on home turf, show-casing his national ambitions and his intent to bring together a “third-front” of parties, that are not aligned with either the BJP or the Congress. Ironically, both the Congress and the BJP parties were instrumental in helping Rao achieve his BRS party’s goal of a separate statehood for Telangana in 2014, distinct from the larger, united state of Andhra Pradesh.
The meeting venue, Khammam, lies on the border of Andhra and Telangana, likely symbolizing Rao’s show of might in neighboring Andhra, where the incumbent chief minister, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy of the YSRCP party, may not take too kindly to it. Khammam district is also home to a significant number of Telugu people from the Andhra regions and was until recently a stronghold of Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP party. Chandrasekhar Rao’s choice of a meeting venue on the Andhra-Telangana border is sure to ruffle the feathers of both Jagan Reddy and Chandrababu Naidu, even as he announces his grand arrival on the national political stage. Incidentally, Naidu had held a mammoth political rally in Khammam just a few weeks ago, which was reported to have drawn large crowds.
At the Khammam “third-front” meeting, Rao and the other leaders of the anti-BJP camp, were heard criticising the union BJP government, on pretty much everything one could think of – water, welfare schemes, policy making, electricity, ideology, agriculture, education and a long list of everything else!
Rao is trying to popularize his election slogan “Ab Ki Baar, Kisaan Sirkar” (implying a farmer/agriculture friendly government). His slogan is already making news for not being an interesting, original one. Instead it is a close copy of previous BJP tag lines: “Ab ki baar, Modi Sarkar” , “Phir ek baar, Modi Sarkar”.
Chandrasekhar Rao and his BRS party are up against heavy odds in the 2023 Telangana elections:
1) Anti-incumbency: There appears to be an anti-incumbency wave after two consecutive terms and almost ten years in power.
2) Tough political opposition and multiple strong contenders: The rising presence of the BJP in the state, the old Congress war horse, the TDP party fighting to remain a major contender, the muslim AIMIM party and the fairly new YSRTP led by Jagan Reddy’s estranged sister in addition to the various “Communist” ideology based parties and all those rebel leaders, choosing to contest as independents.
Click here to subscribe to The Commune on Telegram and get the best stories of the day delivered to you personally.