Published Aug 30, 2026 | 12:07 PM ⚊ Updated Aug 30, 2026 | 12:17 PM
Considering the situation in the North, the BJP is intensifying its efforts to establish a strong foothold in the southern states.
Synopsis: The BJP’s political dominance in North India is facing challenges from youth-led protests over poor governance, while its efforts to expand in the South remain difficult. In Telangana, the denial of Chief Minister Revanth Reddy’s US visit has strengthened the Congress’s narrative that the Centre is discriminating against the state.
At a time when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was revelling in the belief that it had completely conquered the northern part of the country and that only the “invasion” of the South remained, the Gen Z took to the streets under the banner of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) and poured cold water on the BJP’s hopes.
Now, inspired by the Gen Z movement, Gen Alpha too has recently begun taking to the streets and launching protests in several states of North India. Over the past three weeks, school students have walked out of their classrooms, marched to government offices, locked school gates and sat on the roads demanding answers from the authorities.
Their demands are extremely basic. They want teachers who actually teach, fans and lights in classrooms, desks to write on, proper food, clean drinking water and usable toilets. Students at another school demanded that a proper road be built so that they could get to school. These are hardly extravagant demands. Is it not the responsibility of the governments elected by their parents to provide all these facilities without the children having to ask for them?
Over the past three weeks, these Gen Alpha protests have taken place in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, all states ruled by the BJP. The Rajasthan High Court, meanwhile, ordered that nearly 86,934 classrooms be closed because they were in substandard condition. The CJP’s “School Theek Karo” (“Fix the School”) campaign has also added to the BJP’s challenges in the North.
Also Read: The crushing cost of MMDR Amendment Act: Telangana stares at a major fiscal blow
Aditya Kumar, a six-year-old child from Bihar’s Patna has shown the BJP and the RSS a modern-day version of the mythical Vamana avatar, an episode they repeatedly invoke.
Kumar had participated in the student-led protests in Patna over irregularities in the state’s examination and recruitment process. His presence at the protest and extraordinarily clear political opinion garnered widespread attention and prompted action against him and his family. Aditya Kumar listed out his reasons for demanding the resignation of Bihar Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary and left the BJP staring at an embarrassing situation.
The detention of the six-year-old child and the alleged detention and harassment of his parents were widely circulated on social media, exposing to the world how lawless the police system in North India has become.
If they thought that little Vamanas and Prahladas -and now Aditya Kumars- are too young to do anything, we have seen what happens when such children are underestimated, both then and now. This little boy, Aditya Kumar, may well have appeared to them as an incarnation of Vamana, who placed his left foot on the head of King Bali while taking the third step.
Considering the situation in the North, the BJP is intensifying its efforts to establish a strong foothold in the southern states. It has been working towards this in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. In Andhra Pradesh, the BJP is moving forward by clinging to the support of a temporary ally whose reliability is questionable. However, it has also realised that Karnataka and Telangana will be much harder to crack.
The party has lost much of the enthusiasm it displayed after winning nearly half of Telangana’s Lok Sabha seats in 2024. Even as the BJP has begun preparations for the upcoming municipal corporation elections in the state, Telangana’s exclusion from the party’s newly announced national executive has raised questions.
Such a move inevitably sends a negative signal to the people. Did the BJP conclude that there was no point wasting its energy and resources in Telangana because, whatever it did, it could not come to power there?
Meanwhile, adding to the BJP’s challenges, the Centre appears to have handed the Congress another political weapon by forcing Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy to cut short his recent foreign tour.
Revanth Reddy had travelled to London on August 20 for an official 10-day visit covering the United Kingdom and the United States under the banner “Telangana Rising”. From London, he was scheduled to travel to Boston and New York and return on August 30.
The state government had formally sought permission from the Ministry of External Affairs for the visit, as required under the rules. However, the Centre gave permission for the UK leg of the trip while denying permission for the US visit, allegedly on political grounds. In doing so, it handed the Congress a powerful political weapon.
After the Centre denied permission for his US visit, Chief Minister Revanth Reddy returned to Hyderabad on August 23. He said the proposed visit was aimed at signing agreements with foreign institutions to further the development of education in Telangana. He alleged that by denying him permission, the Centre had humiliated and discriminated against the state.
The CM questioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in the denial of permission, asking whether officials of the MEA had the authority to prevent his visit without the PM’s knowledge. He also pointed out that just eight days earlier, the Centre had allowed Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel to travel to the US to attract investments under the “Vibrant Gujarat” initiative.
The perception that Telangana was being treated unfairly in order to help Gujarat has gained considerable traction among the people of the state, much to the dismay of the BJP. There was also speculation in political circles that the real reason for denying permission for Revanth Reddy’s US visit was that he had proposed meetings with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and US Vice-President J.D. Vance.
While making it clear that he had no appointment with Mamdani, Reddy nevertheless questioned why such a meeting could not take place with an elected representative. BJP leaders from Telangana defended the Centre’s decision saying Mamdani was sympathetic towards Pakistan. To this Reddy responded asking why PM Modi had gone to Pakistan without informing anyone and whether Pakistan was a friendly country then.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani belongs to the Democratic Party and is naturally opposed to Donald Trump. He is the son of renowned Indian filmmaker Mira Nair who was born in Rourkela in Odisha. Although Mamdani was born after his mother had settled abroad, he has great respect for India. He has bluntly said that the India he grew up in and knew was secular, and that the India sought by the RSS is different. That could be why the BJP is so hostile towards him.
Even if Revanth Reddy had wanted to meet Mamdani merely because he opposed the ideology of the RSS and BJP, it is not right to treat such a meeting as though it were some act of treason.
If the Centre denied permission to Revanth Reddy to travel to the US to attract investments or conclude agreements relating to better-quality education, it is only natural for the question to arise: what benefit to India did the Centre see in granting permission for RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s visit?
Another question raised by Reddy is worth mentioning here.
Whenever a chief minister or senior officials travel to another country, Indian diplomatic missions in those countries not only prepare their programmes minute by minute, but also monitor them and officially send reports to the central government detailing everything that takes place during those meetings.
If the conversation between Revanth Reddy and Mamdani, or between Revanth Reddy and J.D. Vance, would have been reported to the Centre word for word anyway, what exactly did the Centre achieve by preventing the CM from making the trip?
If anything, this episode will only strengthen the existing perception among the people of Telangana that the BJP is hostile towards them — and, more specifically, that it was opposed to the creation of Telangana as a separate state.
The Telangana government too should have exercised greater caution. They could simply have waited for the Centre’s response before finalising and announcing the travel dates.
But since the episode is politically advantageous to the Congress, the humiliation caused by the Centre blocking the visit may ultimately prove to be a small price to pay. The Congress party has been able to portray it as evidence that the BJP is anti-Telangana. The incident was condemned by senior leaders, including party president Mallikarjun Kharge.
At a time when the Telangana Congress is grappling with internal rifts, the entire episode can be seen as an unexpected stroke of good fortune for the Congress government in the state.
(Edited by Fayisa CA)
