Typically, KCR mood revolves around political moves and planning. This always disrupts the others political strategies with the involvement of KCR aides and decisions. Regardless of the results, the launch of the Bharatiya Rashtra Samiti (BRS), a national party that will replace the regional TRS (which will now be erased and replaced as a brand), is one of the most unpredictable events in Indian politics. It has the potential to produce huge moonshot gains on the upside and high political risk on the downside.
It is the result of a visionary leader who has now made sure he would be remembered in Indian political history as one of its most enigmatic risk-takers and as someone who is more able to think obliquely than any other politician has ever been.
As a direct result, Telangana now has three national parties competing for public support: the Congress, BJP, and BRS, while Andhra Pradesh also has three regional parties seeking for power: the ruling YSRC, the main opposition Telugu Desam, and the budding Jana Sena. While regional and smaller “start-up parties” have little traction or influence in Telangana, the two major national parties are trying to get a footing in AP.
Because the inauguration of the BRS is a “black swan event” in Indian politics, it is difficult to foresee all the effects and outcomes. But anyone who wants to dismiss the BRS must go back to when KCR sir started the TRS and an agitation for separate statehood, which was just over 20 years ago, a TRS leader stated.
Another leader joked, “The main attractiveness of our party was Telangana emotion, our name,” when describing the fears and trepidations within the party. We are setting off on an uncharted voyage without a map when we give it up. There is unquestionably a danger component to the endeavour.
The majority of TRS officials are hopeful that maintaining the same symbol and colour will lessen the likelihood that the state will be moved.
Although Andhra Pradesh, which is next door, has not reacted to the BRS move all that much, parties will be closely watching the pink party’s actual moves. Rao, who led the TD before founding the TRS, has strong ties to the yellow party and may start to strategically poach its important figures.
Arvind Kejriwal and Chandrashekar Rao take quite different approaches to growing their respective parties, the Aam Aadmi Party and the BRS, respectively. Both are risk-takers and cautious, yet despite certain similarities, their risk propensities, as well as other personality traits, are noticeably different.
Interestingly, both Kejriwal and Chandrashekar Rao see a significant political vacuum in the country as a result of the Congress losing elections and becoming weaker, enabling the BJP a near-walkover in many contests.
But whereas Kejriwal, after his disastrous stint in extreme adventure — resigning as CM, contesting against Narendra Modi directly in Varanasi Lok Sabha in 2014 — has moved towards a Rahul Dravidesque approach of winning a state here and a foothold in another there.
Experiences being different, Rao wants to harness the economic and social differences between the south and rest of India, wants to offer the “Telangana” model, based on over eight years of governance, and the results, especially in the irrigation and farming sector, besides some of the welfare programmes, as a basis to reach out to the deep, agrarian crisis in the country.
As of now, neither Rao nor Kejriwal, wishes to be part of a front against the Narendra Modi-led BJP; whereas several other senior national leaders, including Nitish Kumar, Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray, M.K. Stalin, Mamata Banerjee and Akhilesh Yadav, besides others, believe in some kind of a front, with minor differences on the role of the Congress in such a composition.
The other crucial difference between the two mercurial Chief Ministers is while Kejriwal is chipping away at the Congress vote bank — with early surveys predicting a big BJP win in Gujarat and Himachal owing to the AAP foray — the BRS wants to take on the BJP and cut into its vote bank, especially amongst the farmers.
Interestingly, both the national parties have undergone a similar exercise but for vastly different reasons. The BJP itself used to be the Jana Sangh; hence a name change as a precursor to a successful entry into national politics cannot be dismissed.
The larger state-level concern is whether the BRS will distract the party, and its Telangana setup, from a crucial attention to the Assembly elections in a little over a year, with reports of growing anti-incumbency.
Again, none of the major regional satraps must run in a state election prior to the Lok Sabha election; instead, Rao must run in Assembly elections first. The domestic test for Nitish Kumar, Mamata Banerjee, Stalin, Kejriwal, and Thackeray is held after the national exam.
And the Munugode byelection, in which the TRS may compete in its final elections under that avatar, may portend future developments. In any case, Rao’s BRS has once again shaken up politics in the Telugu states and has the potential to have a significant influence on politics at the federal level. #KhabarLive #hydnews #hydlive
