Hyderabad: The members of former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao’s family, who retain a strangle-hold over party affairs, are said to have decided against contesting the 2024 Lok Sabha elections in Telangana state.
Many in the BRS, after its bruising defeat in the Assembly elections, were hoping against hope that Chandrashekar Rao might contest from the Medak constituency but that prospect is simply not on the cards, according to party sources. The same is said to be the case with Chandrashekar Rao’s son and BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao, and daughter and MLC K. Kavitha, with both being said to be reluctant to try and make it to the Lok Sabha.
Senior party leader and former minister T. Harish Rao too is said to have made it clear that he will stay at the state level and help in the party’s rebuild, given his reputation as a troubleshooter for the BRS.
The BRS won nine Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 elections and has been putting a brave face for the polls to come with its leaders claiming that they will win at least seven or eight seats in the coming elections.
However, party sources, well versed with the current political scenario in Telangana, the BRS, at best, will just end up fighting hard in the Lok Sabha polls.
Despite Rama Rao’s attempt to rally his party cadre and drill home the message that only BRS can be the voice of Telangana in Parliament and that they should ensure this in the coming Lok Sabha polls, this line is being met with some scepticism within the party circles.
After dropping Telangana from the party name for Bharat, and having been defeated under its new avatar of BRS, instead of the TRS, this claim sounds pretty hollow to the people, a party leader said.
If none from Chandrasekhar Rao’s family wants to enter the Lok Sabha fray, then it might be difficult to convince other leaders why they should put their political careers in jeopardy by contesting the Lok Sabha elections, particularly when the prospects for the party are poor as things stand now, a party leader said.
