Amit Shah springs a surprise, promises Telangana a backward class CM

Shah seems to have had both national as well as state politics in mind. A backward class leader has never been the CM of even undivided Andhra Pradesh. Since Telangana was formed in 2014, K Chandrashekar, who belongs to the forward Velama community, has been its CM.

The BJP has two strong backward class leaders in Telangana – Bandi Sanjay Kumar and Etela Rajender, who have both earned their stripes taking on KCR and the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS). While Bandi Sanjay Kumar belongs to the powerful Munneru Kapu community (a sub-sect of the Kapu community), Rajender is from the equally dominant Mudiraj group.

The state has 134 backward class groups, which are altogether estimated to account for 52% of the state’s population.

As the Telangana BJP chief, Kumar had aggressively targeted the KCR government, and was seen as having put the BJP on a strong wicket in the state. But in July, Kumar was replaced.

Now, the BJP has fielded Kumar from the Karimnagar Assembly seat. While he had lost from the constituency in 2018, he had bounced back a year later, winning the Karimnagar Lok Sabha seat. Kumar is seen as having a strong hold on not only the 50-lakh strong Munneru Kapu community, but other BC communities as well.

Rajender, the party’s state election committee head, has been fielded from Gajwel besides his present seat of Huzurabad. This is significant as KCR is contesting from Gajwel, besides the Kamareddy seat, and Rajender was once seen as No.2 in the BRS (formerly TRS).

A four-time MLA with the BRS from Huzurabad, Rajender had resigned from the party in June 2021 after he was dropped by KCR as minister over allegations of land grabbing. In the bypoll from the seat, he won on a BJP ticket despite the BRS going all out to defeat him.

Many are seeing Shah’s announcement of a backward class CM as a swipe at KCR, who is believed to have dumped Rajender when he felt threatened by him. “Rajender always considered himself second-in-command in the KCR government and a successor, though the BRS chief wanted to anoint his son. It is Rajender’s expanding ambitions which made KCR drop him,’’ a BJP leader said Friday.

Incidentally, on October 8, the Mudiraj Mahasabha Fisheries Association held a massive meeting in Hyderabad, where its leaders lambasted the BRS for not allocating tickets to their community leaders.

The Mudiraj population in Telangana is about 60 lakh, and they are spread over much of North Telangana and parts of Hyderabad.

There is another backward class leader on whom eyes are trained now, after Shah’s announcement: Dharmapuri Arvind, the younger son of former Andhra PCC chief D Srinivas, and the Lok Sabha BJP MP from Nizamabad.

An avid cricketer who played for Hyderabad in the Ranji Trophy, Arvind contested his first election in 2019, taking the BJP route even as his father went to the TRS (now BRS). He won by over 70,000 votes, riding on a wave of dissent among turmeric farmers against KCR’s daughter K Kavitha.

Arvind was reportedly keen on retaining his MP seat for 2024, but has been fielded by the BJP from Koratla, an Assembly segment in the Nizamabad Lok Sabha constituency. Things might be tough for him as the Centre has set up a regional spices board office at Nizamabad, instead of a turmeric board as promised.

Earlier, Arvind’s father Srinivas was seen as having played a crucial role in the Congress storming to power in Andhra in 2004 and 2009.

Shah made the announcement at a ‘Jana Garjana Sabha’ in Suryapet Friday, where he again attacked the BRS as “a family-run party”. He said that the BRS was anti-poor and anti-Dalit, and that only the BJP can develop Telangana with Narendra Modi as the Prime Minister. “The BRS has proved that it is anti-Dalit. KCR promised a Dalit CM, what happened?” Shah said.

Congress leaders admitted Shah’s declaration had caused surprise – and some worry. Any consolidation of backward class votes in the BJP’s favour would result in division of the anti-BRS votes.

After the BJP toned down its attacks against KCR and the BRS government, under Union minister G Kishan Reddy as state chief, the Congress has been confident that the BJP’s campaign has lost steam. Shah’s announcement, however, clearly shows an attempt to reach out to the backward classes.

Talking to The Indian Express some days ago, BJP Telangana chief spokesperson Krishna Sagar Rao admitted there was a perception that the party had fallen silent. Acknowledging that “perception is important in politics”, he added: “However, the perception that we were on top as well as the one that we are at the bottom are media hype.”

Backward class groups, incidentally, have been pressuring KCR to conduct a caste survey. In October 2021, the Telangana Assembly adopted a resolution requesting the Centre to take up a counting of the BC groups.

Then there is the national context. The Congress, especially Rahul Gandhi, has been aggressively demanding a caste census, focusing on representation for OBCs. At a recent press conference, Rahul underlined that three of the party’s four CMs are OBCs.