It was learnt that Sanjay urged the party's central leadership to recognise his services rendered to strengthen the BJP on all fronts.
Bandi Sanjay with Amit Shah. (Twitter)
Amid continuing sniping among the leaders in Telangana BJP, Karimnagar MP and former state president Bandi Sanjay Kumar on Monday, 24 July, met Union Home Minister Amith Shah in New Delhi, triggering speculation among the cadre on what could have transpired between them.
Though leaders in the party said that Amit Shah and Sanjay discussed the political situation in the state, sources told South First said Sanjay lodged a complaint with him stating that his followers were being sidelined after the recent changes in the state leadership.
He is believed to have requested Amit Shah to do justice to his followers, who worked hard to make a success of his “Praja Sangrama Yatra” and other protests organised during his tenure as the state president in Telangana.
The yatra also galvanised the cadre, prompting several leaders from other parties, especially from the Congress, to join the BJP.
It was during Bandi Sanjay’s tenure that the party won Dubbaka and Huzurabad by-elections. A majority of municipal divisions were bagged by the BJP in GHMC elections during his time as the state unit president.
The party also stood in second place in the by-election in the Munugode constituency — a seat where it had been a distant third in the 2018 election.
Many committed leaders even went to jail while fighting against the anti-people policies of the ruling BRS government, he is said to have told Shah, adding that some leaders and activists faced torture from the police who booked false cases against them.
It is learnt that Bandi Sanjay urged the party’s central leadership to recognise his services rendered to strengthen the BJP on all fronts.
Sources said Amit Shah is believed to have informed Sanjay that the internal matters of the party should not be shared in the public domain.
Meanwhile, the Telangana state unit is gearing up to announce within a few weeks the constituency-wise list of candidates who would contest the state Assembly elections.
Though the Assembly elections are expected to be conducted by the end of this year, the BJP wanted to announce the list of candidates of many constituencies to enable them to take part in the campaign exposing the failures of the BRS government in the last nine years.
Bandi Sanjay was removed as he was not getting along with recent entrants to the party such as Huzurabad MLA Eatala Rajender and Munugode candidate Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy — both lateral entrants from the ruling BRS and the Opposition Congress, respectively.
The leaders had basic differences over strategy as well as ideology, with Rajender and Rajagopal Reddy favouring the targeting of the BRS and Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao for corruption and incompetence, while Bandi Sanjay was pushing for reliance on the BJP’s tried and tested Hindutva plank of communal polarisation.
In the end, after meetings with Union Home Minister Amit Shah, the assertion by Rajender and Rajagopal Reddy — that Hindutva would not find much traction in a South Indian state like Telangana — appears to have been accepted.
The party brought in Union Minister G Kishan Reddy to replace Bandi Sanjay, even as it elevated Eatala Rajender as the head of the Election Management Committee that will run the campaign for the Assembly election scheduled for November-December this year.
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