After conquering Telangana state assembly in the just concluded elections by defeating the Bharat Rashtra Samithi convincingly, Pradesh Congress Committee president and chief minister A Revanth Reddy is facing yet another major challenge in a very short time.
The fresh challenge before Revanth is to win majority of gram panchayats, elections for which are most likely to be held in January.
The state election commission (SEC) has already begun preparations for the conduct of elections to 12,769 gram panchayats, whose term will expire by January 31.
In all probability, the notification for the gram panchayats is likely to be issued in the last week of December. In 2019, the notification was issued on January 1 and the polling was held in three phases on January 21, 25 and 30.
The SEC asked all the district collectors to kickstart the process for the rural local bodies.
The previous BRS government proposed formation of another 224 new gram panchayats in the state, but the file is pending approval from the Governor. If the governor clears the file before the election notification, elections will be held for a total of 12,993 gram panchayats.
Though the elections are supposed to be held on non-party basis without any party symbols allotted to the contestants, it is quite obvious that the political parties openly get involved in the whole process and candidates openly flaunt their political affiliation.
So, the outcome of the gram panchayat elections will definitely indicate the hold of political parties in the rural bodies and they also give an indication to the future prospects of the political parties.
As of now, the BRS has been strongly entrenched in the rural bodies, as the party had been in power for nearly a decade. Therefore, it is a difficult task for the Congress to establish itself as a strong force in the rural areas.
But since the Congress is in power at the state level, it can influence the voting pattern in the rural areas to a great extent.
In the recent elections, the rural voters strongly backed the Congress, while the urban voters stood by the BRS. So, it might get repeated to a large extent in the gram panchayat elections as well.
Secondly, there have been largescale complaints from the sarpanches of the gram panchayats elected in 2019 against the previous BRS government that it had usurped all the panchayat funds and had not released money for the developmental works taken up by sarpanches.
Many sarpanches had quit their posts and campaigned against the BRS in the recent elections. This factor might turn out to be negative for the BRS.
If the Congress can cash in on the situation, it can improve its base in the rural areas and that will help the party in the coming elections, including MLC elections.