CM KCR deploys poll survey teams to test Karnataka waters

HYDERABAD: With Karnataka's Assembly elections scheduled for April-May 2023, BRS president and Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao has deployed survey agencies to six districts in that state to assess the winning prospects in the event that the JDS and BRS form a pre-poll alliance.

Party insiders said the BRS was eyeing the six districts in Karnataka which were part of the erstwhile Hyderabad State and were known as the Hyderabad-Karnataka region before being renamed Kalyana Karnataka. These districts have 40 Assembly seats.

Rao will take a call on contesting the Karnataka elections and negotiate seat-sharing with the JDS of former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda and Kumaraswamy based on survey reports, sources said.

The survey teams were deployed to the districts of Bidar, Yadgir, Raichur, Koppal, Kalaburagi, and Ballari-Vijayanagara, all of which have a sizable Telangana population. The Congress holds the most seats in these districts, at 21, followed by the BJP with 15, and the JDS with four.

Rao is learnt to be of the strong opinion that both the Congress and the BJP have lost ground in these districts, and that if the BRS and JDS work together effectively, they have a potential to achieve a clean sweep. If that happens, the BRS-JDS will play a significant role in forming the next government in Karnataka.

Although the JDS won just 34 seats in the 2017 Assembly polls out of 224, Kumaraswamy became CM with the support of the Congress which won 80. The BJP emerged as the single largest party with 104 seats. The Kumaraswamy government could last for just 14 months after it failed the floor test in the Assembly.

Rao believes that the BRS-JDS coalition will get an opportunity to form the government with the support of the Congress if it gets 40 seats in the 2023 Assembly polls. Rao and JDS leader Kumaraswamy have a close relationship, as made evident by Rao's invitation to the former Karnataka CM to all three major events in his political career: one party's state executive meeting held on October 5 to rename the TRS as BRS to enter national politics, two formally launching the BRS by hoisting the flag at the Telangana Bhavan on December 9, and three the inauguration of BRS office in New Delhi on December 14. Kumaraswamy attended all the three events.

While addressing the meeting at the Telangana Bhavan on December 9, Rao spoke about working together with the JDS in the Karnataka Assembly polls and said the TRS leaders will campaign in his party's support and expressed confidence that Kumaraswamy will be the future CM of Karnataka.