Newsmaker | BJP brings in amiable old hand, G Kishan Reddy, to head Telangana unit

Elected as the MP from Secunderabad in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Kishan Reddy is a former three-time MLA. He was president of the BJP in undivided Andhra Pradesh from 2010 to 2014, and its Telangana chief from 2014 to 2016.

His predecessor Kumar is also an MP, and was elected from Karimnagar in 2019.

Kishan Reddy is seen as acceptable to the different factions within the BJP Telangana unit. He also enjoys a very cordial relationship with central party leaders, including Amit Shah and BJP chief J P Nadda.

Kumar, on the other hand, had frequent run-ins with various leaders, especially senior names who recently crossed over to the BJP from the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS). He was also seen as aggressive and abrasive towards rival leaders within the BJP.

The change of guard may also be another sign of the softening dynamics between the BRS and BJP, with Kishan Reddy more likely to make friends across the aisles. Telangana is set for elections later this year, with the BJP making impressive strides in the state and hoping to build on the same.

Recently, BRS-turned-BJP leaders Etela Rajender and Komatireddy Raj Gopal Reddy, apart from others in the BJP, had approached the central leadership complaining of being ignored within the state unit, laying the blame on Kumar.

Several BJP leaders, including its Dubbaka MLA M Raghunandan Rao, said openly that it would be easier to work with Kishan Reddy.

In a statement thanking the leadership for picking him as the Telangana BJP chief, Kishan Reddy said: “I am happy, but it is also a great responsibility.”

After a long run of six years at the head of the BJP’s united Andhra and then Telangana units, Kishan Reddy was replaced in April 2016. In the December 2018 Assembly polls, he lost narrowly from Amberpet to a BRS (then known as the Telangana Rashtra Samithi) candidate.

Five months later, he was elected as MP from Secunderabad, after the party fielded him instead of sitting MP Bandaru Dattatreya. His rival was the BRS’s Sai Talasani, the son of minister Talasani Srinivas Yadav, who is considered a close confidant of Telangana CM K Chandrashekar Rao.

Hailing from Timmapur in Rangareddy district, Kishan Reddy started out in politics as a student leader with the Janata Party. He later joined the BJP, and was the first state treasurer of the Andhra unit of the party in the early ’80s, and later the state secretary of the BJP Yuva Morcha.

In 2004, Kishan Reddy was elected as an MLA for the first time, from Himayatnagar in Hyderabad, which was later merged into the Khairtabad constituency.

In 2009 and 2014, he won from Amberpet Assembly seat near Hyderabad.