From appearing to be in a winning position for months ahead of the November 2023 Telangana Assembly elections, enough for its chief K Chandrashekar Rao to nurture national ambitions, to almost becoming “inconsequential” in its backyard in the Lok Sabha polls, the fall of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) in a span of just over four months has been spectacularly drastic. The arrest of KCR's daughter K Kavitha on Friday, in the Delhi excise policy case, while long-expected, will only add to the sense of unravelling about the party that ruled Telangana for 10 years till losing power in the recent Assembly polls. And yet, as recently as August last year, the BRS – its rechristening from the Telangana Rashtra Samithi reflective of KCR’s hopes of rallying the Opposition behind him – seemed far ahead of its rivals in Telangana. With three months to go for the Assembly polls, the BRS had declared candidates for 115 of the 119 seats, an expression of its confidence, and its intention of gaining the first mover’s advantage – especially against its main rival Congress, a party known to hem and haw towards choosing candidates. The BRS even defied naysayers who feared the weight of two tenures of anti-incumbency, by retaining most of its sitting MLAs. The results which reduced the party to 39 seats from 88 in 2018 were devastating for KCR, the face of not just the BRS but Telangana itself, having led the struggle for the creation of the state. The Congress, having wrested power in a second southern state after Karnataka months earlier, got a fresh breath of life from its 64-seat win. It has since launched a two-pronged attack on the BRS – on its government’s alleged mis-governance, and on the party's political standing in the state. As per Congress Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy, he is running a “prajala prabhutvam (people’s government)”, as opposed to the BRS’s “dorala rajyam (rule of feudal landlords)”. His government has started four of the six guarantees promised by the Congress in the run-up to the polls, and launched investigations into alleged corruption by the previous KCR government. White papers tabled by the Revanth government on the financial condition of the state during the nine-year BRS regime underline the rise in the state’s debt from Rs 72,000 crore to over Rs 6 lakh crore. Yet another probe was ordered earlier this week by the state government – by a panel led by former Supreme Court judge Justice Pinaki Chandra Bose – to investigate alleged corruption in the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project cleared under the KCR government, alleged irregularities in the Bhadradri and Yadadri power plants, as well as the power purchase sharing arrangement that the KCR government signed with the Chhattisgarh government. On the political front, the BRS has been losing leaders to both the Congress and BJP at multiple levels – from rural local bodies to MPs. The BRS, which garnered most of its seats from urban pockets in the Assembly polls, is facing heat from the Congress in these areas as its corporators switch sides. In the Hyderabad region, for example, the Congress had drawn a blank across the 24 Assembly seats in 2023, with the BRS winning 16 of them, its ally AIMIM getting 7 and the BJP 1. A slide in urban areas will add to the BRS's rural slip. Of the 119 Assembly seats in Telangana, 80 are classified as rural. In the 2018 Assembly polls, the BRS had swept the same, winning 62, with the Congress trailing at 15. But in last year's Assembly polls, the situation was reversed, with the BRS winning 19 of the 80 rural seats and the Congress getting 56. Last month, a former Telangana Congress spokesperson told The Indian Express that several BRS leaders were in touch to cross over, but that the Congress was holding back. “We will wait and watch and the high command will take a decision closer to the Lok Sabha elections,” he said. On Thursday, the Congress leader said the influx of leaders from the BRS is expected to play a significant role in helping the party achieve its target of 14-plus of the state’s total 17 Lok Sabha seats. Worryingly for KCR, even the BJP, a minor if rising force in Telangana, is breathing down the BRS’s neck by “poaching” its leaders. Having won 4 Lok Sabha seats in 2019, the BJP has gone all out to improve its tally, and is counting on the Ram Temple consecration to go a long way. “We almost doubled our vote share and increased our seats (to 8 from 1 in 2018) in last year’s Assembly elections. We hope to continue this momentum. Our analysis shows that a major chunk of the BRS vote has transferred to us. We want to ensure that it remains with us and don't want to give the BRS any chance to claw back,” former MLA C Ramachandra Reddy, who is now with the BJP, said. Pointing to the party's candidate from Hyderabad against AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi – an articulate mother of two – the BJP leader added: “We are a strong force in Telangana. The candidates we have announced show this. We will do better than the BRS.” The BJP has so far announced candidates for 14 Lok Sabha seats, while the BRS has declared nominees for 10 and the Congress for 4. The BRS dismisses the impact of defections, terming the leaders who have left the party as “power hungry”. “When we were in power, they left other parties and came to us. Now that we are out of power, they are leaving us. These defections will not impact the party’s performance in the Lok Sabha elections,” BRS spokesperson Dasoju Srravan told The Indian Express. He added that even if many leaders from the top layer appear to be leaving, the BRS had a “robust organisation” and the next level of leaders will step up to the task. “The second layer (of leaders) will now become the first layer,” he said. However, Kavitha's arrest and KCR’s continuing “inaccessibility” – a factor in the Assembly polls – are also expected to determine how much support the BRS retains. BRS workers admit disappointment in private at KCR and the other top leadership not learning any lessons from the Assembly poll results, continuing to remain aloof and showing little indication of putting up a strong fight in the Lok Sabha polls. An injury to KCR soon after the results, putting him out of action, hasn't helped matters. “The condition is so bad that the party is having to fight the BJP for leaders to put up candidates in Lok Sabha seats,” a leader from Sangareddy, who has been associated with the party since its inception in 2001, said, in reference to former BRS Wardhannapet MLA Aroori Ramesh, who was allegedly “kidnapped” by his own men to prevent him from joining the BJP. The leader said the “wholesale” defections will impact the party’s chances, and is afraid the BRS might not even open its account in the Lok Sabha. “There is no denying that the BRS’s performance will be dismal. This is what happens if you lose focus on your backyard and have ambitions elsewhere,” he said, in a barb at KCR's national tours ahead of the Assembly elections. In fact, after the Assembly results, there was a call from within the party for the BRS to go back to its original Telangana Rashtra Samithi name. Recently, “angry” BRS leaders in Maharashtra, the first state the party zeroed in on to expand beyond Telangana, given the association of many parts of it with the Nizam's rule, wrote a letter to KCR seeking directions regarding the Lok Sabha plans. “We never expected to see this day for a party which fought for the formation of Telangana. A combination of pogaru (arrogance) and lack of political planning has brought us to this condition,” a BRS leader said.
