Hyderabad: The BRS, which is desperately hoping for a revival of fortunes after losing the State Assembly elections in 2023, is expected to have an even tougher uphill battle in the coming Lok Sabha elections.
Though senior party leaders have been holding a second round of constituency-level meetings with the candidates and leaders from respective constituencies in attendance, and are doing their best to instill confidence among the cadre, the question, according to party sources, is whether this will translate into victories, and if so, from how many of the 17 Lok Sabha seats in the state the party is contesting from.
The party is hoping that its president and former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao will breathe some new life into the BRS once he steps out and leads the election campaign. However, some party leaders also worry that the Congress and the BJP will do everything possible to heckle Chandrashekar Rao, particularly over two issues, his daughter K Kavitha’s arrest in the Delhi liquor scam money laundering case, and the expanding police probe into phone tapping during his term as Telangana chief minister.
Party sources say that the best hopes for the BRS is to win in Medak, and to some extent in Malkajgiri, two Lok Sabha constituencies within which the party did well in the 2023 Assembly elections. Even if the BRS does win these two seats, it will be a fall from the nine seats it won from in the 2019 elections, and could well leave the BRS gasping.
In the Medak Lok Sabha constituency, the BRS in the 2023 Assembly elections, won from six of the seven Assembly segments — Gajwel, Siddipet, Dubbak, Narsapur, Sangareddy, and Patancheru — and is pinning hopes on the presence of Chandrasehkar Rao as the Gajwel MLA, and senior party leader T. Harish Rao as the Siddipet MLA to pull the party through. The BRS has fielded former IAS officer P. Venkatram Reddy from Medak, while the former BJP MLA from Dubbak who lost the last Assembly elections, is the BJP nominee. The Congress is yet to name its candidate from Medak.
“Medak is where the BRS must win from, and if it loses, then it will spell disaster for our party’s top leadership,” a party source confessed.
The other seat where the BRS is hoping it can do well, and win from is Malkajgiri where it won from all the seven Assembly segments — Medchal, Malkajgiri, Quthbullapur, Kukatpally, Uppal, LB Nagar, and Secunderabad Cantonment — in the 2023 Assembly elections. The Secunderabad Cantonment seat is currently vacant following the recent death of the BRS MLA Lasya Nandita in a road accident. Here, the BRS nominee is Ragidi Laxma Reddy, who was previously in Congress, while the Congress has nominated P Sunitha Mahender Reddy the Vikarabad ZP chairperson, who was previously in the BRS.
Taking these two on will be the BJP’s Etala Rajender, who hopes to overcome his Assembly election loss from Huzurabad and Gajwel, by winning from here. For the BRS, Malkajgiri also has another significance as this was the constituency from where Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy had won from on a Congress ticket in the 2019 general elections.
Though the BRS also won from six Assembly segments in Secunderabad constituency where it fielded T. Padma Rao Goud from for the Lok Sabha polls, an interesting face off is expected as the Congress nominated Danam Nagender, who won the Assembly elections on a BRS ticket from Khairatabad but switched sides recently, while the BJP is seeking to retain the seat with Union Minister G Kishan Reddy in the fray.
