His exit was a fresh setback to the BRS' efforts to bounce back from last year's Telangana Assembly elections defeat to the Congress.
The image BB Patil uploaded on social media platforms after joining the BJP. (bbpatils/Facebook)
The sitting MPs of the BRS appear to be making a beeline to join the BJP ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
Zaheerabad MP BB Patil crossed the Rubicon on Friday, 1 March, and joined the ranks of the saffron party in the presence of Union IT Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar in Delhi.
Admitting Patil into the BJP, Chandrasekhar said that the party would benefit from his arrival
His exit from the BRS was a definite setback to a party that is trying to bounce back from the humiliating defeat it suffered at the hands of the Congress in last year’s Telangana Assembly elections.
He dashed off his letter of resignation from the party to BRS supremo K Chandrashekar Rao on Thursday.
According to sources, Patil, who has varied businesses, is understood to have felt that the BJP was a better bet than the BRS given the traction the saffron party has been getting all over the country.
BRS MP @MPBBPATIL ji from Telangana's Zaheerabad joins Bharatiya Janata Party, reflecting a strategic shift in the political landscape. This move is a clear sign of faith in @NarendraModi Ji’s development agenda. Welcome to @BJP4India family. pic.twitter.com/EVMvvUSmUV
— Tarun Chugh (Modi Ka Parivar) (@tarunchughbjp) March 1, 2024
Patil’s resignation came close on the heels of Nagarkurnool MP Pothuganti Ramulu bidding goodbye to the BRS on Thursday.
Patil draws a lot of water among the Lingayats and might add muscle to the BJP in a constituency where it is not very strong now.
The saffron party does not have to look any further for a candidate as it now has a custom-made one from the BRS.
It remains to be seen how the contest for Zaheerabad pans out, since the Congress is likely to field former MP Suresh Shetkar, who also belongs to the Lingayat community and is also well-known in the constituency.
This apart, the Congress has made smart gains in the election to Assembly segments in the Zaheerabad Lok Sabha constituency. Of the seven segments, the Congress bagged four, the BRS two, and the BJP just one.
In fact, Patil has been preparing to break away from the BRS for the last four days. It was expected that he would announce crossing the point of no return on Thursday, when Ramulu announced his resignation from the BRS and joined the BJP.
According to sources in the party, Patil has been feeling ill at ease with remaining in the BRS after the pink party lost the Telangana Assembly elections.
He decided to shift his loyalty to the saffron party despite the BRS making it clear that Patil would be its candidate from Zaheerabad for the Lok Sabha elections.
It appears he veered to the conclusion that it would be better for him to be on the side of the BJP for the upcoming polls.
His supporters surmise that after the BRS lost power in the state, much water has flowed in the Musi, and expecting a repeat of the 2019 Lok Sabha election results — in favour of the BRS — might be foolhardy.
As Patil is basically a businessman, he may have decided to prefer the party in power in the Centre to the one that is out of power in the state.
Patil won the Zaheerabad seat in 2014 in a fight with Suresh Shetkar of the Congress with a majority of 1.44 lakh votes. In 2019, he vanquished Madan Mohan Rao of the Congress with a majority of just over 6,000 votes.
In 2009, Suresh Shetkar wrested the seat from Sayed Yusuf Ali of the BRS (then the TRS). A low-profile MP, he always avoided the media glare and chose to stay on the sidelines.
Even when the Lok Sabha was in session, he used to share with reporters at most a handful of points of the issues that he had raised in the Lok Sabha.
Patil’s exit from the BRS should be unnerving for the party since it has been making a conscious effort to shake off the “loser” image and emerge as a credible alternative to the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections.
Patil’s departure, following that of Ramulu on Thursday, happened when the BRS was trying to turn the tables against the Congress government on the Medigadda barrage issue to retrieve some lost ground.
Ramulu joined the BJP in the presence of Telangana in-charge Tarun Chugh. He said; “Ramulu’s arrival in the BJP will help the party. We need leaders like him, who are known for their probity in public life,” he said.
The back-to-back blows came even as the party was yet to pull itself together from the effects of the exit of Lok Sabha member Venkatesh Nethakani.
The Peddapalli MP joined the Congress recently as he, too, felt that the BRS was not the right place to stay in the current circumstances, with the quicksand of politics shifting continuously.
BRS leaders appear to be unable to hold back the MPs leaving the party despite their best efforts.
When Venkatesh Nethakani left, the party was taken aback. When Ramulu took his leap of faith, the party was reconciled to its fate.
According to the BRS sources in Nagarkunrool, the party had been looking at Ramulu’s moves suspiciously for quite some time now.
When the BRS held a review meeting on the Nagarkurnool Assembly segment recently, Ramulu was reportedly neither consulted nor invited to the event.
With the BRS losing most of its sheen now, Ramulu joined the Congress as there was apparently no room for him in the regional party.
Already, Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee senior vice-president Mallu Ravi has thrown his hat in the ring after resigning from the post of the special representative of the state in Delhi and made his intention very clear that he was in the race for the Nagarkurnool Lok Sabha seat.
The BRS now has the onerous task of looking for the right candidate for the constituency.
The only alternative appears to be to consider former MLA Guvvala Balaraju, but it is said that he has earned a lot of anti-incumbency during the last five years.
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