Battered BRS explores alliance with BJP, but pushback from other side

The BRS is also nervous about the Congress government in the state slapping cases on its leaders. The party is already facing the heat from Central agencies, with KCR’s daughter and MLC K Kavitha in custody for five months now in the Delhi excise policy case.

Sources said that KCR’s son and BRS leader K T Rama Rao, who was in Delhi earlier this week, came to meet BJP leaders to explore the chances for an arrangement.

A BJP leader opposed to a dalliance with the BRS said the support for this is coming from BJP leaders “who want to save the BRS leadership, especially its first family”. “However, many in the state unit believe it will be suicidal for the BJP in the long run. To be seen as making efforts to protect the family will draw a lot of criticism,” the leader said.

This section also sees such attempts as unnecessary given that the BJP has marked its presence in the state by winning eight Lok Sabha seats, the same as the ruling Congress. This group is also resistant to offers of an alliance in Telangana by the BJP’s Andhra partners TDP and the JanaSena Party, as they believe the BJP is poised to grow on its own in Telangana.

Admitting that the BRS was considering options, party leader and former Lok Sabha MP B Vinod Kumar did not rule out anything. Asked whether an alliance or a merger with the BJP was on the cards, he said: “A majority of the leaders in our party are democratic and progressive. And Telangana is a state that has witnessed struggles since pre-Independence days… Elections are too far away anyway.”

But, Kumar added: “Anything can happen in politics, and nothing can be ruled out.”

He also said that it would be a mistake to write off the BRS. “We have cadres in each and every village of the 33 districts of Telangana. Neither the Congress nor the BJP has this. We may have lost now, but there is a lot of scope for us to re-emerge as a force. There is already resentment among the people against the Revanth Reddy government’s failure to keep its promises.”

Kumar added that the Congress, which is in power now, was in a worse state five years ago. After losing its MLAs to the BRS, the Congress was left with only five, but has now bounced back, he said. “So, we should not worry about the present situation.”

Another BRS leader said the party should not make any hasty moves out of “fear of revenge politics from Revanth Reddy”. The leader added that the Chief Minister would be wary after what had happened in Andhra Pradesh, where YSRCP leader Jagan Mohan Reddy’s move as CM of arresting his rival N Chandrababu Naidu of the TDP had boomeranged, with the TDP sweeping the Assembly polls that followed. “Revanth is unlikely to repeat the mistake,” said the BRS leader.

Since Revanth, who is also the Telangana Congress chief, led the party to a win in the Assembly elections last year, winning 64 seats out of 119 and reducing the BRS to 39, the KCR-led party has been on the slide. The death of an MLA and the loss of seven more to the Congress have reduced the BRS strength to 31.

Seven of the BRS’s MLCs have also changed sides, while it could not win a single seat in the Lok Sabha elections.

Revanth, who is known to bear a deep grudge against KCR and his family, has initiated probes into alleged irregularities in a number of projects under the previous BRS government, apart from into phone tapping charges.