Division of votes between the major national parties, Congress and BJP, will help BRS maintain their tally of Lok Sabha seats, say party leaders.
According to political analysts, a strong contest between Congress and BJP in the Lok Sabha elections in Telangana could eventually help the K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) perform well in the triangular contest. The state has 17 Lok Sabha seats, with the BRS currently holding the highest number at 9.
A BRS leader close to the leadership said, “In the recently held Assembly elections, we polled around 38% of votes. In the LS elections in 2019, we polled around 42%. So, we are confident that our vote bank will remain around that number. Moreover, as BJP usually garners more votes in Lok Sabha elections compared to Assembly elections, it appears there will be a division of votes between the major national parties, Congress and BJP, which will help us maintain our tally of nine Lok Sabha seats.
Yet, we will take measures to prepare as much as we can because this time both Congress and BJP have become stronger in the state, posing a potential threat to our seats. However, we are certain that we will win at least 5 seats and aim to retain our nine seats.”
He added, “For now there are no clear signs if BRS will do an alliance with BJP or go with I.N.D.I.A bloc. If there would be anything like that, it would be confined to the top leadership.” Moreover, the reference point for the BRS to emerge as a dark horse in the state is being drawn from BJP’s K. Venkata Ramana Reddy’s victory on Kamareddy Assembly seat. He won despite thought to be a distant third in popularity as compared to the two giants, BRS’ K. Chandrasekhar Rao (then Chief Minister) and Congress’ Revanth Reddy (current CM), who were also contesting from the same seat.
A political analyst said, “Kamareddy saw a fierce battle between the two principal parties, BRS and Congress. However, eventually it was the BJP that took the seat on a completely different narrative. Now in the general elections, the two principal parties are BJP and Congress and they are going to contest fiercely therefore the Kamareddy trend could be seen in the whole state.”
Talking about the regions where the three parties have an edge over each other, the map shows the clear distinction between strongholds of each party in the 2019 LS elections. In north Telangana, BJP won four adjoining Lok Sabha constituencies, while in south Telangana, the Congress party secured three adjoining constituencies, splitting the east and west of the state from where the BRS won nine LS seats.
Moreover, KCR’s son, K.T. Rama Rao is reviewing all the 17 LS seats. The meetings are being conducted in two phases to assess the pulse of the electorate. In the first phase, the meetings are being held from 3-12 January. The second phase would be conducted on 16 January after a three-day break for the Sankranti festival. The series of meetings has commenced with a plan for Adilabad Parliament constituency meeting which was conducted on 3 January.