From the announcement of a new national party, to the RSS Dussehra rally in Nagpur, here are political events and developments that are likely to make a splash today: KCR to announce national party: At the TRS’s general body meeting today, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, popularly known as KCR, is expected to launch a national political party. Sources said that at an “auspicious time”, the CM will announce the renaming of the party to 'Bharata Rashtra Samiti' (BRS). This could mark the beginning of the CM’s long-standing dream to float an anti-BJP national front for which he has been touring the country and gaining support this year. JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy and 20 MLAs of the party flew to Hyderabad Tuesday to attend the launch of the new national political party. As per a JD (S) insider, the BRS will be a conglomeration of various regional parties, “to put up a united fight against the BJP”. Meanwhile, Congress’s general secretary communications in-charge Jairam Ramesh in conversation with reporters in Hyderabad said “the BJP and the TRS were two sides of the same coin”. “If you have a Sultan in Delhi, you have a Nizam in Hyderabad,” he said yesterday. The Sena versus Sena showdown in Mumbai: Holding a Dussehra rally at the city’s Shivaji park has been of great significance to the Shiv Sena. All of its monumental decisions and milestones through the years – such as the launch of its youth wing under the leadership of then 20-year-old Aaditya Thackeray in 2010 – were taken here. With the split and the ensuing flight to assert who the “real” party is, it is looking like the final showdown will be the events that Shiv Sena President Uddhav Thackeray and CM Eknath Shinde have organised for today. The court may have asked the Uddhav faction to hold the rally at Shivaji park, but the Eknath Shinde side has pulled out all the stops for its rally at the MMRDA grounds in the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) area in the city. Several thousand Thackeray supporters from rural Maharashtra have reached Mumbai in buses, trains, and private vehicles. The Shinde Camp claimed that around 400,000 Shiv Sainiks from across the state will be present at the rally and that it had organised around 4,000 buses to ferry them to the venue. All eyes and ears are on which event will attract more people and, more importantly, what will be said at the events. Bahubali actor Prabhas at Ramlila attended by Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will be the chief guest of the Dussehra ceremony at Red Fort today, organised by the Luv Kush Ramlila Committee, one of the oldest in Delhi. Accompanying him is actor Prabhas of Bahubali fame. In his latest film “Adipurush” – whose teaser was released this week – he is playing the role of Lord Ram. The film had its first run-in with controversy when MP Home minister Narottam Mishra on Tuesday warned the makers of legal action if “scenes that hurt religious sentiments” were not removed from the film. RSS rally at Nagpur: Dussehra, also known as Vijayadashmi, was the day the right-wing organisation was founded by KB Hegdewar in 1926. Every year, the RSS holds an annual rally to commemorate the same at its headquarters in Nagpur. The “sarsangchalak” or the head delivers a speech that holds importance for its members and affiliates. In 2020, for example, the current chief of the organisation, Mohan Bhagwat, threw his weight behind the central government on the three contentious farm laws and virtually endorsed Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s theory of an “international conspiracy” against his state government. Last year, he called upon state governments to return all temple property under their control to “Hindu society” and repeated the organisation’s demand for a population policy to tackle what it claims is a “demographic imbalance”. (With PTI inputs)
