Even as the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party are yet to complete the exercise of selection of candidates for the ensuing Lok Sabha elections in Telangana, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) led by former chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has announced the list of all the 17 candidates.
While five out of the six sitting MPs defected to other parties and another MP getting elected as an MLA in the recent elections, KCR retained the remaining three MPs – Nama Nageshwar Rao from Khammam, Maloth Kavitha from Mahabubabad and Manne Srinivas Reddy from Mahabubnagar.
Out of the remaining 14 candidates, only B Vinod Kumar from Karimnagar had earlier served as an MP, while Koppula Eshwar, Bajireddy Goverdhan, T Padma Rao Goud and Atram Sakku were the party MLAs and P Venkatrami Reddy is an MLC.
The remaining nine candidates are either new comers or those who lost the elections in the past.
So far so good. But one wonders with what political agenda will KCR go to the Lok Sabha elections.
He cannot ask the people to vote for his party based on his government’s performance between 2014 and 2023, because they had already given their judgement on this plank in November 30 assembly elections.
KCR cannot attack on the Congress party and ask the people to vote for the BRS in Lok Sabha elections, because the Congress has not been in power for the last 10 years.
So, there is no point in attacking the 100-day-old Revanth Reddy government in Telangana and asking the people for vote for the BRS in Lok Sabha elections.
Thirdly, the BRS chief has no moral right to attack the BJP either and ask the people to vote for the BRS in Lok Sabha polls to get huge benefits to the state, because the people have already given two such chances in the past – 2014 and 2019. Yet, the BRS did not get any funds to the state by adopting confrontationist stand against the Narendra Modi government.
At the same time, KCR has to be answerable to many of the questions being raised by the Congress and the BJP on the allegations of corruption, including Kaleshwaram scam, telephone tapping scandal, TSPSC question paper leakage scam, ORR scam and many other allegations of corruption that surfaced in the last three months.
“Against this backdrop, one wonders whether the BRS would be able to win any seats in the Lok Sabha elections. Even the selection of candidates has not been very satisfactory,” a political analyst said.