Modi will lay foundation stones for several infrastructure projects and address a public meeting for which the BJP is mobilising huge crowds.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be addressing a public meeting during his visit to Telangana. (BJP4Karnataka/Twitter)
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is arriving in Telangana on Saturday, 8 July, as the embers of dissidence in the Telangana BJP unit begin to die down and the party begins to acquire a new look to face the more daunting challenge of the Assembly elections in December this year.
He will lay the foundation stone for several infrastructure projects worth ₹6,100 crore, including a railway wagon factory and a periodic overhauling facility in Warangal, and address a public meeting for which the BJP leaders are mobilising huge crowds to rival Rahul Gandhi’s rally in Khammam on 2 July.
The BJP has the onerous task of pushing the Congress to third place and rising to challenge the BRS. With the fortunes of the Congress looking bright, the task before the BJP is daunting.
The party, with its new look, is getting ready for the task that lies ahead, with Eatala Rajender as the chairman of the Election Management Committee and Union Minister G Kishan Reddy holding the reins of the party.
With former unit chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar now removed from the scene, most of the firepower will be missing from the campaign. Kishan Reddy is expected to take on the Congress, while Eatala is expected to be leading the charge against the BRS supremo.
The prime minister is expected to tear into the BRS, accusing it of being a family rule steeped in corruption. That BRS and KCR are always in his mind was proved by the fact that in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, he recently appealed to the people to vote for the BRS only if they want KCR’s daughter to prosper, and vote for the BJP if they want their children and grandchildren to prosper.
The intensity of the attack is expected to be severe, with the BRS boycotting the official programmes of the prime minister, alleging that he had cold-shouldered the promises made in the AP State Reorganisation Act, 2014, which included a railway coach factory in Kazipet, tribal university in Mulugu, and a steel factory in Bayyaram in the state.
The prime minister is expected to take the BRS on, focusing on the need for a crusade against the family rule and corruption with redoubled vigour. The BJP party leaders are expecting Modi to show them the direction in which they have to travel in the run-up to the elections.
As Bandi Sanjay, who has come to be known as the crusader of Hindutva, has been relieved of his responsibilities, it is widely felt that the attack on the BRS would be mostly regarding corruption.
The party is yet to tie up the loose ends in the Telangana BJP unit and it is expected that after the Prime Minister returns to Delhi, he might get around to the reconstitution of his Cabinet into which Adilabad MP Soyam Bapu Rao might be taken as a Minister of State as the BJP has been eyeing the tribal votes as they are sine qua non for it to return to power for the third time at the national level.
It is not yet clear whether Kishan Reddy would be relieved of his Cabinet berth or would be allowed to hold both positions as, in an election year, it would help the party if he held both.
The party also has to accommodate Bandi Sanjay, who has brought impetus to the party in Telangana, somewhere — either in the Cabinet or by entrusting him with an important position in the party.
As things now stand, Bandi Sanjay is averse to accepting an offer of minister of state as he is basically a man with cadres and would like to be among them. It appears that there would be at least two ministers from Telangana in the central Cabinet to fortify the party.
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