TRS to redraw strategy to counter rise of BJP in Telangana

HYDERABAD: With the changed political dynamics in the state after the BJP’s national executive meeting for two days and the Prime Minister’s public meeting in the city, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) leadership is forced to redraw its political strategy to counter BJP’s narrative of installing ‘double engine government’ in Telangana.

TRS president and Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao is likely to hold the party’s state executive committee meeting soon to guide party leaders on this issue.

Party sources said the TRS executive committee meeting was supposed to be held in the last week of June but the party chief postponed it after the BJP announced to hold its national executive meeting in the city on July 2 and 3. This was to watch and know the political moves and strategies of the BJP national leadership towards Telangana, discuss them in the state executive committee and come up with a ‘counter strategy’ to check the rise of BJP in Telangana.

Now that the BJP’s top brass made it clear in their national executive meeting that their next focus would be Telangana and their top priority was to capture power in Telangana, the TRS chief is learnt to have felt that there is a need to hold party’s state executive meeting very soon to discuss all these issues and guide leaders on how to counter ‘double engine government in TS’ narrative of the BJP.

Sources added that the TRS wanted to take up an aggressive campaign against ‘double engine governments’ to tell people how ‘single engine TRS government’s’ performance was far better that ‘double engine BJP governments’ in 18 states in terms of implementing welfare schemes and development programmes.

The party is understood to be gathering data of every double-engine BJP government state with regard to GSDP, per capita income, debt burden, power supply, drinking water, irrigation, industrial growth, IT sector growth, job creation in private and government sectors, agriculture, health, education, welfare schemes and other development programmes and compare them with single-engine TRS government's performance and ask people to judge for themselves which engine was better for them, sources said.

The TRS leadership wants to highlight that people in the border areas of neighbouring states having double engine governments such as Maharashtra and Karnataka were demanding either to merge their areas in Telangana or implement the welfare schemes and development programmes of Telangana government in their states.

While addressing the ‘Vijay Sankalp Sabha’ in Parade Grounds on Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union home minister Amit Shah, BJP national president J.P. Nadda and BJP's top brass asserted that Telangana would witness ‘double engine government’ after Assembly polls scheduled for 2023-end.

All top leaders of the BJP from national and state-level talked about installing double engine government in Telangana and expressed confidence of BJP forming the next government in Telangana after 2023 Assembly polls.

The political resolution moved by Amit Shah in the national executive meeting at HICC clearly state that the “next big breakthrough for the BJP will be in the South” specifically Telangana and Tamil Nadu.

Though he did say that the party had resolved to come to power in Kerala, Karnataka and Odisha too, the immediate focus appears to be Telangana, given the party's national and state leadership’s aggressive stand towards the ruling TRS after 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Against this backdrop, the upcoming TRS state executive meeting is expected to take stock of the changed political dynamics in state and come up with a counter-strategy against double-engine governments.