With less than three months to go for assembly elections, the political scene in Telangana has come alive. Last weekend, three contenders for office, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), the Congress and the BJP — held rallies in the state. The Congress, which lost its base to K Chandrasekhar Rao’s BRS after the Andhra Pradesh bifurcation in 2014, is hopeful that anti-incumbency, the positive response to Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, and the win in Karnataka will boost the party’s chances. The decision to hold the first meeting of the new Congress Working Committee in Hyderabad was surely influenced by the urge to make a splash in the state capital. Sonia Gandhi, who addressed the rally, invoked the Congress’s legacy and listed the party’s poll promises. Borrowing from its Karnataka playbook, she announced six guarantees, among them assistance of ₹2,500 per month to women, gas cylinders at ₹500, free bus travel for women, cash for farmers, peasants and farm labourers, housing, and ₹10 lakh medical insurance.
These promises have much in common with the welfare measures the BRS has introduced since 2014. KCR had crafted an expansive social coalition. Revenue-rich Hyderabad funded his welfare programmes. However, KCR’s ambitious push for a national profile — the renaming of Telangana Rashtra Samithi as BRS is a branding disaster — and the shadow of corruption over his family, has diminished the party’s image. The BJP, which was poised to emerge as the main opposition, seems to have lost its way. The Congress’s hope of revival in Telangana springs from this churn in state politics, but success is not guaranteed.
