With over 3 crore voters, Telangana is all set to witness a fierce battle between the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) which is seeking a third consecutive term, the Congress that is pinning on its success in Karnataka, and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which hopes to leverage the anti-incumbency wave. While much is at stake for the governance of the 10-year old Telugu state, the results will also set the ground for how the state might vote in the Lok Sabha elections next year.
Voting in Telangana for the 119-seat assembly is set to take place on November 30, when elections in the other four states will be over – which could give the two national parties an upper hand in their campaign for control of the Hindi heartland.
The results, which will be announced on December 3, will also provide a window to the electoral mood of the southern states of the country that have largely responded to welfare policies and local promises over theatrics around religion and communalism.
BRS in power for nearly a decade
The ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), earlier known as Telangana Rashtra Samithi, headed by Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao, won two consecutive electoral battles in 2014 and 2018. It secured a simple majority in 2014, winning 63 out of 119 seats but managed to increase its presence to 88 seats in the 2018 elections.
The party has been riding strongly on the sentiment of Telangana as a separate state, taking public memory back to 1969 when more than 300 people lost their lives during the agitation.
Political experts believe that this factor has largely worked in favour of the party that has been in power for almost a decade now. The party’s charismatic chief, who launched Telangana Rashtra Samithi in 2001, kept pushing for the formation of Telangana, which was once a region in Andhra Pradesh state. Once Telangana was carved out of AP in 2014, KCR started focusing on developing the state on various agricultural and economic parameters.
Throughout his rule, KCR has introduced policies targeted towards different castes and communities, women, and farmers – pension schemes for single women, Rythu Bandhu scheme, also known as Farmer's Investment Support Scheme, Dalit Bandhu scheme, provided free power to farmers, Kalyana Lakshmi scheme for married women and many others.
KCR's name is also attached to massive developmental projects in the state such as the Kaleswaram irrigation project, mission Kakatiya meant for repairing ponds, lakes and tanks, and mission Bhagiratha for providing drinking water to every household in the state.
But how long will the narrative of welfare policies work when scores of government jobs remain unfilled in the state? While the notifications for government jobs were issued in the state in 2022 after a gap of four years, the leaking of papers, frequent postponements, and administrative hurdles have delayed the exams time and again, causing extreme distress to job aspirants.
Recently, the Telangana government postponed the DSC (District Selection Committee) exams, scheduled from November 20 to 30, due to the upcoming Assembly polls. Job aspirants in the state have frequently organised protests against the KCR government for nearly stalling all recruitment to government posts for eight years. This crisis of youth unemployment has taken centre stage in the months leading up to the polls.
Further, the majority of the sitting MLAs of the BRS are facing stiff anti-incumbency in their respective constituencies.
Congress plans to replicate ‘Karnataka model’
The Congress, riding high on its thumping victory in Karnataka in May, is seeking to replicate the same formula of focus on hyper-local issues and promising pre-poll guarantees in Telangana.
Congress parliamentary party chairperson Sonia Gandhi has announced six “guarantees” for the people of Telangana – monthly financial assistance of Rs 2,500 for women, Rs 15,000 annually for farmers and tenant farmers, 200 units of free electricity for eligible households, 250 sq yards plot for all Telangana movement fighters, students will receive Vidya Bharosa Cards worth Rs 5 lakh, and a monthly pension of Rs 4,000 for the elderly.
The promise to implement the guarantees in the first 100 days of coming to power –like was done in Karnataka– has given the party a boost.
The party also banked on the Telangana statehood sentiment with Sonia urging people to recollect her party’s fulfilled commitment to creating the state, while addressing a public rally in September.
The party’s performance in the last two polls however has not been satisfactory. While the Congress vote share rose between 2014 and 2018, its seat tally fell marginally. The state hasn’t had a Congress government since Kiran Kumar Reddy was the CM of unified Andhra in 2014. Reddy has since then quit the party.
BJP struggles to make headway
The BJP could win only five out of 45 seats it had contested in alliance with the TDP in 2014 in the newly-formed state. But the strength slipped to just one seat in the December 2018 elections. However, the party scored big in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections as it won four seats.
Among other factors, the limited impact of Hindutva ideology in the state, as was seen in Karnataka, is attributed to the party’s frequent losses in the region.
The party is banking on its national-level faces to turn the votes in its favour. Prime Minister Narendra Modi kickstarted the campaign from Mahabubnagar and followed it up with another meeting in Nizamabad where he announced the formation of a turmeric board –a long-standing demand of farmers in the region– if brought to power. He also lashed out at the BRS leadership and went to the extent of saying that KCR made a bid to join the NDA, which was rejected – effectively shutting down rumours of an alliance between the two.
BJP leaders are also playing up the allegations against KCR’s daughter K Kavitha in the Delhi liquor policy scam. However, according to a mood survey carried out by Hyderabad-based People's Pulse, the BJP doesn’t have strong candidates in at least 90 Assembly constituencies.
The survey predicts that the Opposition parties —the Congress and the BJP— are not in a position to capitalise on the anti-incumbency against the ruling BRS, which may pave the way for Rao to return as the Chief Minister of Telangana.
