Hyderabad: On Monday, after darshan at Tirupati in the morning, Prime Minister Narendra Modi participated in a mega road show in Hyderabad in the evening. The 2.5km procession went from the RTC cross-roads to the statue of V.D. Savarkar in Kachiguda, and was joined by some of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidates for the city’s assembly seats.
Earlier, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had also campaigned here, reiterating his old assurance that Hyderabad would be renamed Bhagyanagar “once the BJP takes over Telangana”. He also hit out at the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) over the state’s 4 percent reservation for Muslims.
It has been three years since the BJP sprang a surprise in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) polls in 2020, winning 48 seats, up from four in the previous election. That had catapulted the party to the position of principal challenger to the ruling BRS (then called the Telangana Rashtra Samithi or TRS). It is perceived to have lost a bit of its momentum since then, but the party is pulling out all stops to build on its GHMC performance in the Hyderabad capital city area, which covers 24 assembly constituencies. The BJP is contesting 23 of these, leaving one for its ally, the Jana Sena Party.
These seats constitute a fifth of Telangana’s 119 assembly constituencies and are up for grabs for the four main contestants – the BRS, the Congress, the BJP and the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM). In the 2018 assembly polls, the TRS took the lion’s share of 14 seats and the AIMIM held on to its seven Muslim-dominated seats in the old city, while the Congress won two and the BJP one.
Both the Congress MLAs – D. Sudheer Reddy in LB Nagar and Sabitha Indra Reddy in Maheshwaram – defected to the TRS within months of being elected in December 2018 December.
While the BJP is particularly focussed on this densely urbanised region — looking to capitalise on its GHMC success — its former state chief, Karimnagar MP Bandi Sanjay, is missing in action in Hyderabad. Bandi was replaced as Telangana BJP president by Union minister G. Kishan Reddy in July and is now contesting the Karimnagar assembly seat. Under Bandi’s leadership, the BJP had gained an unprecedented momentum in the state that has been lost after his removal, say party leaders and activists.
As state party chief, Bandi had promised “surgical strikes” in the old city to flush out “Pakistanis, Rohingyas” if the BJP was voted to power in the GHMC election. However, although the 2020 poll atmosphere was charged with allegedly vitriolic speeches, political observers attribute the BJP’s success to public disillusionment with the TRS.
“The devastating floods in October and the inaction on part of the state government and civic body (both controlled by the TRS), its ally AIMIM’s indifference to public suffering etc. all played a role in the BJP’s growth then,” says Professor Purushotham Reddy, a political scientist.
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Triangular contests
While the main contest in the majority of rural areas — according to political observers and as ThePrint has found from its on-ground reportage from various constituencies — is between the BRS and the Congress, the BJP’s hopes are pinned on the urban electorate, especially in Hyderabad.
The December 2020 GHMC performance, in addition to victories in two assembly by-elections —Dubbaka in 2020 and Huzurabad in 2021 — had galvanised the BJP’s cadres and central leadership alike. However, the party is struggling to counter the growing perception in the past few months that it has lost the principal challenger’s position to the Congress.
The Congress’s resurgence coincides with its resounding victory in Karnataka, the removal of the firebrand Bandi as Telangana BJP chief and discontent in the state unit over the lack of tangible action against BRS MLC K. Kavitha, CM K. Chandrashekar Rao’s daughter, in connection with the alleged Delhi excise policy scam.
However, lending a helping hand to the BJP is a group of young volunteers— techies, entrepreneurs, US returnees etc — under the banner ‘Pro-Namo’. Since the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, these men and women have been campaigning vigorously for BJP candidates, be it in the GHMC polls, the Dubbaka bypoll, or the Munugode by-election last year, in which the party was defeated. Their sole motive is “seeing PM Narendra Modi win”.
“People say the BJP wave has ebbed but we were receiving positive responses wherever we went canvassing – Kalwakurthy in the south to Vemulawada in central Telangana. In GHMC, the BJP has good prospects in Serilingampally, LB Nagar, Uppal, Khairatabad, Jubilee Hills, Sanath Nagar and Qutubullapur etc. — 10-12 seats,” says Sanjay Ch (44), one of the Pro-Namo convenors.
Telangana BJP spokesperson N.V. Subhash says that Modi’s presence now and the Modi government’s focus on various urban projects such as the smart cities concept “will appeal to the educated, employed and other middle, upper middle-class voters”.
BJP leaders say it will be BJP vs BRS in some, and triangular to four-cornered contests in other GHMC area seats.
However, some voters in wards that went to the BJP in 2020 say they are favouring the Congress or the BRS this time.
“I preferred the BJP then. Now I am thinking of voting for stability, continuity at the state level,” says Ravi V., a bank executive, in Moula Ali, a GHMC ward won by the BJP that comes under the Malkajgiri assembly constituency.
In Malkajgiri, senior BJP leader and former MLC N. Ramchander Rao is facing sitting MLA Mynampally Hanumanth Rao — who resigned from the BRS in September after a tiff with the leadership and is now a Congress candidate — and the BRS candidate, Marri Rajasekhar Reddy.
The BJP has put up GHMC councillor T. Srinivas Reddy as its candidate in the Rajendranagar constituency, where the AIMIM has also thrown its hat this time with a Hindu candidate, Swamy Yadav. The BRS and the Congress are also in the race here.
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Old city warfare
Stepping out of its seven-seat fief, the Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM has fielded candidates in Rajendranagar and Jubilee Hills too. Apart from these nine seats, AIMIM has declared support for its ally, the BRS, elsewhere in Telangana.
“The AIMIM’s intentions (of dividing the Muslim vote and helping its friends) are exposed by fielding a Muslim candidate against me,” Jubilee Hills Congress candidate Mohammed Azharuddin had told ThePrint earlier.
Congress leaders say the AIMIM’s move was intended to help BRS candidate and sitting MLA Maganti Gopinath in a constituency with a large Muslim vote.
In Goshamahal, the lone non-AIMIM assembly segment under Owaisi’s Hyderabad Lok Sabha seat, sitting BJP MLA T. Raja Singh is banking on votes being fiercely polarised along communal lines.
In the narrow lanes of Dhoolpet, a local resident, engaged in kite making for the coming Sankranti season, says, “I am not bothered about what he has done for me. Singh standing for Hindutva, Hindu Rashtra is the reason I’ll vote for him.”
In the AIMIM-held Nampally segment, part of the Secunderabad Lok Sabha seat, Congress candidate Mohammed Feroz Khan tells ThePrint he is “confident of winning the seat”. He has been defeated while contesting the seat three times — for the Congress in 2018, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in 2014 and the Praja Rajyam Party in 2009. In the 2019 general elections, he fought unsuccessfully against Owaisi for the Hyderabad Lok Sabha seat.
While Khan, an AIMIM critic, is banking on sympathy and the strategy of reaching out to various sections, the Congress is hoping for a slice of the AIMIM’s Muslim vote to shift to it. The AIMIM has nominated Majid Hussain in place of sitting MLA Jaffer Hussain.
Jana Sena in the fray & the TDP vote
Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena Party has finally entered the Telangana poll arena and is in the fray in eight seats in alliance with the BJP. One of them is in Hyderabad — Kukatpally, an area with a high proportion of settlers from Andhra Pradesh, mostly employed in the IT sector. The JSP ran a strong campaign for its candidate M. Prem Kumar, who joined it from the BJP before the nominations.
In 2020, the Jana Sena had withdrawn its GHMC poll plans and instead supported the BJP.
In the absence of the TDP, which decided to sit out the elections, the pro-TDP settler vote, especially that of the Kamma community, is expected to be split among different parties.
“We are thinking of going with the Congress this time,” say Ch. Rajyalakshmi and Ch. Gopal, voters in the Qutubullapur constituency.
(Edited by Rohan Manoj)
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