Congress, BRS, BJP finalise high-octane Telangana campaigning plans for Lok Sabha polls

As the elections in Telangana will be in the fourth phase, the parties have enough time to plan for their blitzkrieg campaigns.

Also Read: Congress names 4 of the remaining 8 Telangana Lok Sabha candidates

The Congress

Of the three parties, the BJP and the BRS have already announced the full complement of their candidates.

The Congress announced four more names late on Wednesday, 27 March. It had named candidates for nine seats earlier. It is expected to announce the remaining four names soon.

The party is keen on making the most of the favourable conditions prevailing for it and winning not less than 14 of the 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana.

After pulling off a great victory in last year’s Assembly elections, the party is hopeful of doing an encore in the Lok Sabha polls.

This apart, winning the maximum number of seats is very crucial for the Congress. As the INDIA bloc struggles under the weight of its own contradictions, the Congress is keen to win the most number of seats and be in the vanguard.

For this to happen, every seat is important for the party. It is looking at Chief Minister Revanth Reddy to hopefully add a significant number to its national Lok Sabha seats tally.

Revanth Reddy has more or less finalised a major rally to be held in the first week of next month. The chief minister, at an informal meeting with the party leaders on Tuesday, put the date tentatively on 6 or 7 April.

The party wants to invite AICC president Mallikarjun Kharge and senior leader Rahul Gandhi for the public meeting, which would be crucial since the Congress would be officially announcing all the guarantees for the entire nation.

The party wants to hold the public meeting with a massive turnout at Thukkuguda, where it sounded the bugle for the Assembly elections in Telangana on 17 September last year.

This was also where and when the party announced its manifesto with the six guarantees that catapulted it to power, surprising even some poll pundits.

The chief minister has said in a meeting with party leaders that Lok Sabha polls in Telangana would be like a referendum on the Congress government’s 100 days of governance in the state.

Also Read: Congress cracks down on leader who criticised LS candidates, 6 guarantees

The BRS

The principal Opposition party in the state, the BRS, is meanwhile raring to spring back to life and make its presence felt in the Lok Sabha polls.

Party supremo K Chandrashekar Rao has already addressed two major public meetings — one in Nalgonda and the other in Karimnagar — where he took the Congress and the BJP to task.

Even as KCR is planning the party’s campaign, his son and BRS working president KT Rama Rao is keeping the tempo going by addressing constituency-level leaders’ meetings every day and filling the party cadres with a new sense of confidence in facing the polls.

The party is trying to navigate choppy waters following its debacle in the Assembly elections.

Many important leaders have already left it in search of greener pastures. Nonetheless, the party has managed to field leaders of some mettle.

The BRS is trying to make the best use of the adversity that came in the form of the arrest of KCR’s daughter K Kavitha — a Telangana MLC — by the Enforcement Directorate.

As Kavitha is in judicial custody in Tihar Jail in Delhi now, the party is trying to explain to the people that her arrest proved there was no nexus between the BRS and the BJP — as had been made out ahead of the Assembly elections by the Congress.

The party leaders are campaigning that the Congress propaganda sowed seeds of doubt among minorities and made them shift to the grand old party.

Now, the BRS is trying to give the Congress a taste of its own medicine by saying that an invisible bond exists between Revanth Reddy and the BJP.

KTR said on Tuesday that Revanth Reddy was all set to join the BJP after the Lok Sabha elections.

He showed as proof Revanth Reddy’s reluctance to say that he would stay with the Congress throughout his life, come what might.

Meanwhile, the BRS is also understood to be planning to have interactions with farmers.

The adverse seasonal conditions and the prolonged dry spell have already begun affecting the farmers. KCR wants to capitalise on the inability of the Congress government to ensure adequate water supply to the farmers, which has led to their crops withering away.

The BRS chief is planning to visit the fields that are drying up due to a lack of water, and interact with farmers.

This may look odd as KCR getting into the slush of the fields and talking to the farmers when he was in power was not a usual sight.

His foray into the fields will begin in either the first or the second weeks of April. He is expected to visit Nalgonda, Bhongir, and Aleru to interact with farmers.

Also Read: BJP, BRS engage in war of words over phone tapping row in Telangana

The BJP

The BJP, meanwhile, is perceived to be ahead of the BRS and the Congress in campaigning.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi conducted a roadshow on 15 March in the Malkajgiri constituency, addressed a huge public meeting in Nagarkurnool the next day, and another public meeting on 18 March at Jagtiyal.

The prime minister went for the BRS’ jugular for its corruption and warned that he would not tolerate graft in any form. He also branded the Congress and the BRS as partners in crime.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah also visited Hyderabad recently, where he interacted with the social media warriors and booth-level coordinators of the party to rejuvenate the cadres and build on the perception that the BJP was rising in Telangana from its deep slumber.

The BJP is planning major meetings after 18 April, to which it wants to invite Prime Minster Narendra Modi to turn the public opinion in its favour.

The party is trying to popularise its slogan “Ab ki bar 400 paar” (400+ Lok Sabha seats this time) and pick up at least 10 seats in Telangana, capitalising on the feel-good factor that is prevailing in favour of the BJP.

The consecration of the Ram Temple at Ayodhya, for the first time, seems to have brought even neutral Hindu voters under the BJP umbrella in Telangana. The CAA is likely to get even more Hindu voters to favour the party.

The BJP’s national-level leaders Sunil Bansal and Tarun Chugh are in constant touch with Union minister G Kishan Reddy, who is also the party’s Telangana unit president, and other state-level leaders, guiding in them chalking out poll strategies.

(Edited by Arkadev Ghoshal)