HYDERABAD: The Bharata Rashtra Samithi on Sunday faced a severe electoral setback, bringing the curtains down on the nine-and-a-half year rule of party president and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao ever since Telangana state was carved out in 2014.
But for the crucial contribution from his son and BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao, whose capital-centric development model paid rich dividends in the form of 17 seats in Hyderabad and surrounding areas out of its overall tally of 39, the party would have faced a humiliating drubbing. Another shot in the arm for Rama Rao was that his proposal for replacement of the poorly performing candidates, which eventually was shot down by the party boss, was vindicated.
The BRS won in nine out of the 10 Assembly constituencies where the legislators were replaced.
“There was a proposal to change at least 30-35 candidates including several ministers against whom the people were angry. After deliberations, KCR preferred to go with the incumbents primarily fearing migration of leaders who were denied tickets to other parties or eating into the BRS vote by contesting as independents,” said party sources.
It was also learnt that suggestions were made by friendly party leaders to project Rama Rao as the Chief Ministerial candidate in the run-up to the polls, if not making him Chief Minister a year before. The result came as a blessing in disguise for the Rama Rao camp which is confident that he can now stake claim to the legacy.
The fall of the BRS, according to party leaders, started with Chandrashekar Rao changing his stance on several issues concerning the state besides anger amongst youth over high incidence of unemployment. “It is a gross failure on our part to check the growing dissent among youth and countering the narrative that we failed to fill government jobs,” Rama Rao admitted, though the party did make an attempt in the later stages of the campaign but it proved to be too little, too late. He also faced ire over his previous remarks appearing to shirk responsibility on jobs and TSPSC paper leaks.
Two separate instances — Chandrashekar Rao’s daughter and MLC K. Kavitha’s name figuring in the Delhi liquor scam and the sinking of the Medigadda barrage — not only gave enormous strength to the allegations of looting of public exchequer by close family members of the Chief Minister but also forced the party to drop any mention of the ‘Bahubali project’ of Kaleswaram in the campaign.
Interacting with people in several districts during election coverage also revealed that Chandrashekar Rao’s gamble of restricting the campaign mainly to creating a paranoia that the Congress if elected would scrap the Dharani portal and restrict free power supply to the farm sector to three hours did not impress the voters.
“We all know how the MLAs misused Dharani to knock off valuable government lands. In several cases the names of original owners were replaced clandestinely using Dharani,” said Prem Kumar, a private employee in Warangal. “Secondly, corruption did not stop, indeed it increased because of the involvement of senior officers including collectors in some districts.”
With regard to free power supply, the voters did not give credence to Chandrashekar Rao’s allegations that Congress would do away with free power and believed the Congress’ counter that it had introduced free power in the first place.
