Telangana BJP battling factionalism, what PM Modi advised MPs to do to bring the party back on track
PM, it is learnt, told BJP MPs to amplify efforts to reach out to people, get actively involved in sports-related activities, and improvise outreach activities
PM Narendra Modi with JD(S) MP H D Deve Gowda, BJP MP Ravi Shankar Prasad, NCP MP Praful Patel and others during a dinner hosted by him for NDA MPs on Thursday in New Delhi, hours after he met BJP MPs from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Andaman and Nicobar Islands. PTI 
Hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted NDA MPs for dinner at his home on Thursday — going table to table, chatting with his parliamentary colleagues and enquiring if they had eaten properly — he met with BJP MPs from Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, and Andaman and Nicobar Islands to discuss governance and the state of the party organisation in their states.
While it is learnt that the PM praised the party’s Andhra Pradesh unit, saying the coalition government led by TDP leader N Chandrababu Naidu was performing well, he urged MPs from Telangana to take stock of why the party had “failed to expose the failures” of the A Revanth Reddy government in the state, said sources in the party. It is learnt that the PM expressed disappointment with the functioning of the state unit and said the party was appearing to be in decline in Telangana. He asked the MPs to think about what they could do to arrest this decline.
The party recently performed poorly in the first phase of the gram panchayat polls earlier this week, with the Congress bagging 55% of the sarpanch posts. “Doing badly in local body polls means leaders do not have a connection with people,” said an MP. The poor performance in the local polls came on the back of last month’s loss in the Jubilee Hills by-election in Hyderabad, in which the BJP candidate secured less than 9% of the votes while the Congress won with over 50% vote share.
The BJP central leadership has been concerned about the lack of unity among state leaders. “Despite repeated urgings from the central leadership, including general secretary Sunil Bansal, the prabhari (in charge), the leaders have failed to work like a team,” said a leader.
The Telangana BJP is said to be divided between the party’s old-time leaders who organically rose through the ranks of the party and the Sangh, and those who switched over from other parties. At a recent meeting of the party’s core group in the state, a senior central BJP leader is learnt to have made a distinction between such “organically BJP leaders” and the “outsiders”, prompting several to write to complain to the top leadership. Sources said they pointed out that the majority of the BJP’s eight MLAs in the state were those who had joined it from other parties.
Modi advised the BJP MPs to amplify their efforts to reach out to people, get actively involved in sports-related activities in their constituencies, and improvise outreach activities such as “tiffin pe charcha (chats over tiffin)” to connect with people, sources said.
“I am not clearly aware of what happened at the meeting with the PM, but Jubilee Hills had never been our stronghold. Even when we had MPs like Bandaru Dattatreya and Kishan Reddy, we could not perform well in this constituency. Primarily, because it is dominated by 1.49 lakh Muslims and 50,000 other minorities, and the Congress played the Muslim card. But I admit we failed to consolidate the Hindu votes,” state BJP chief N Ramachander Rao told The Indian Express.
Rao, however, claimed the party had performed well in the local polls so far. “This is the first time we contested all three levels, contesting nearly 6,000 villages. In the first phase itself, we won nearly 300 and are hopeful about winning more in the coming phases,” he said.
A BJP leader said recent developments in the state had provided the BJP with a “golden chance” to emerge as an effective alternative force in Telangana. “The public spat and the division in the first family of the BRS, with K Kavitha, former MP and daughter of supremo K Chandrasekhar Rao, recently quitting the party and resigning as MLC. This is a golden opportunity for the party to make gains and emerge as a credible alternative.”
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