The Bharatiya Janata Party has identified nine Lok Sabha constituencies in Telangana where it hopes to win in the 2019 general elections. Of these nine Telangana constituencies, the party already occupies one—Secunderabad, represented by Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya.
The remaining eight LS seats are held by the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi: Hyderabad, held by MIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi; Nizamabad, now represented by K. Kavitha, daughter of the state’s Chief Minister, K. Chandrasekhar Rao; Bhongir, held by Bura Narasaiah; Mahabubnagar, held by A.P. Jithender Reddy; Karimnagar, held by B. Vinod Kumar; Malkajgiri, represented by C. Malla Reddy; Medak, in which K. Prabhakar Reddy is incumbent, and Warangal, held by Pasunuri Dayakar.
BJP president Amit Shah was supposed to do a booth wise party cadre meet in the Hyderabad LS seat on Friday, but his tour was postponed. Shah is likely to visit Hyderabad to discuss strategies to win eight more Lok Sabha seats next time, sources said.
As per a schedule finalised by the BJP headquarters, Union minister Nitin Gadkari would be attending a meeting in Nizamabad, Prakash Javadekar in Bhongir and Ananth Kumar in Mahabubnagar and party general secretary Muralidhar Rao in Malkajgiri. MP K. Haribabu in Medak and two more party secretaries for Warangal and Karimnagar will hold meetings before 14 April.
An elaborate strategy is being chalked out to win these parliamentary seats. The BJP wants to put up a fierce fight against the ruling party in Telangana.
All these seats are in areas where the BJP has a strong presence right from the days when it was known as the Jan Sangh. The party feels that even in the worst case scenario, it will fetch five to eight per cent votes.
“We have been sacrificing these seats for the sake of electoral adjustments with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP)over the last few decades, but now we want to reclaim them as we want to go it alone in the coming general elections. We can easily win them, if enough groundwork is done,” BJP Telangana unit president and MLA, K. Laxman told The Sunday Guardian.
Dr Laxman gave hints that the party’s national leadership is keen on improving its 2014 tally of 283 seats in Parliament and Telangana is one of the states which can help it accomplish this task. As the reports of BJP going it alone in next elections trickled in, there is palpable enthusiasm at the ground level as more party leaders will get a chance to contest for both the Lok Sabha and the Assembly elections.
Dr Laxman refused to spell out the details of the strategy, but sources in the party said that several senior leaders including sitting MLAs and former ministers from TDP and Congress are keen on joining the BJP in the next few months. The party is clearly banking on the image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the amount of goodwill generated by the BJP led NDA government at the Centre.