KCR dreams of a national role with BRS, but can he defend his home turf?

In the first major attempt to create a space for his newly-created Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS), Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao organised a rally of non-BJP and non-congress parties during the third week of January. It was a political exercise set in motion to reshape the contours of the national landscape in preparation for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

The idea to launch a party that offers an alternate vision for the country was floated by KCR during the autumn of last year, and after securing a nod from the Election Commission to rename TRS—which KCR founded around the turn of the century in pursuit of a separate state—he swiftly moved to open the BRS party office in Delhi during December.

For the January 18 rally at Khammam, the attendees included three Chief Ministers—Pinarayi Vijayan of Kerala, Bhagwant Mann of Punjab, and Arvind Kejriwal of Delhi; former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav; and Communist Party of India General Secretary D Raja. However, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, his deputy Tejaswi Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, and former chief ministers H D Kumaraswamy (Karnataka) and Uddhav Thackrey (Maharashtra) were conspicuously absent.

In the run-up to the rally and as an outreach programme, KCR held interactions with these parties. Among them, Nitish Kumar considered a potent candidate around whom the opposition could rally, preferred to downplay his absence and termed the Khammam meeting a BRS event.

The early experiment by KCR provided a glimpse of the different layers of approach parties opposed to the BJP have. Of the leaders present at the January 18 rally, parties can be broken down into three formations: the Aam Aadmi Party, the Left, consisting of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the CPI, and the Samajwadi Party.

The presence of these leaders can best be explained as a process of exploring alternative formations, considering that the efficacy of the Congress Party to challenge the BJP remains diminished. Barring the AAP, all other parties have either been in alliance with the Congress or had an understanding with the Grand Old Party. In the case of AAP, it was the Congress that extended support in Delhi after the nascent party fell short of a majority in the 2013 assembly polls.

Ahead of the 2019 general elections, KCR abandoned his attempt to form a Federal Front after the idea found few takers, and this time around, the seasoned politician changed tack by declaring the BRS would take the lead. To underscore the primacy of BRS, he gave the slogan “Ab ki baar, Kisan Sarkar” (this time it will be a government of farmers) at the Centre.

Aside from rephrasing the BJP’s 2014 campaign slogan, “Ab ki Baar Modi Sarkar,” KCR promised to replicate the “Telangana Model” of development and social welfare schemes, similar to how Narendra Modi’s “Gujarat Model” was positioned as the roadmap.

Political parties or formations wishing to challenge and dethrone the BJP from its dominant position will offer an alternate vision for the country and convince voters to choose their candidates. Now here comes the nub of KCR’s plan.

Will regional parties that have a strong presence agree to have an electoral understanding with the BRS? This would require seat adjustment, and the established practice is that parties agree to an alliance based on their relative strengths and the ability of the partners to add to the kitty of votes. It is here that outside of Telangana, the BRS is untested in the polls. The parties that agree to work together will have to converge on an agreed roadmap of policies and programmes.

In the absence of any pact, will the BRS field candidates independently and capture enough votes to make a difference? Previous verdicts show that the presence of multiple candidates results in the fragmentation of votes the opposition hopes to garner against the incumbent government.

Well, these are early days, and what shape the BRS takes will require a few more trials. Meanwhile, KCR is facing a challenge in his home state, where the TRS has been in government for a decade. Is the BRS move a tactic to ward off the “anti-incumbency” factor?

By offering his services for national politics, the BRS chief is projecting a role for himself as one who can throw down the gauntlet to the BJP and PM Modi and, in the process, checkmate the BJP, which is breathing down his neck in Telangana. In addition, the BRS needs to ensure that the Telugu Desam Party does not recover lost space, as N Chandrababu Naidu’s party sought to do by organising a political meet at Khammam. Therein lies the answer to part of the riddle as to the KCR and BRS plans.

(The writer is a senior journalist based in New Delhi)