Telangana Assembly Elections: BJP struggles to identify winning seats

With the ongoing rifts within the party and lack of enthusiasm among functionaries, it remains to be seen whether the BJP can make any difference to its previous tally.

Hyderabad: With the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) turning the BJP into a non-entity in Telangana, the saffron party leadership is now struggling to identify assembly constituencies where it could give some kind of resistance to its rival parties.

According to party sources, the BJP leadership has asked State unit leaders to focus on constituencies falling under the Greater Hyderabad limits, especially Amberpet, Khairatabad, Musheerabad, Uppal, Jubilee Hills, Sanathnagar, Secunderabad Cantonment, Kukatpally, LB Nagar, Serilingampally, Rajendranagar, Karwan, Nampally, Qutbullahpur, Malkajgiri, Medchal and Maheshwaram constituencies.

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Similarly, in Rangareddy district, the party is eyeing Chevella, Vikarabad and Tandur constituencies. In the erstwhile Karimnagar district, the party is seeing Karimnagar, Huzurabad, Sircilla, Vemulawada, Jagtial, Peddapalli and Ramagundam as an important constituencies.

Further, the party leadership has asked the State leadership to put special focus on Nizamabad Urban and Rural, Armoor, Kamareddy, and Yellareddy constituencies, where it is hoping to perform well. In erstwhile Adilabad district, key segments like Adilabad, Boath, Mancherial, Khanapur, Asifabad, Mudhole and Nirmal are also in the focus of the party.

Gadwal, Kalwakurthy, Shadnagar and Mahabubnagar Assembly segments in Mahabubnagar district are also under close scrutiny of the party.
However, several party leaders believe that since the party does not have cadre at the booth level in a majority of constituencies and given the lack of preparedness, it will be very tough for the BJP to defeat the ruling BRS.

In 2018 too, the BJP made tall claims about winning seats, but were left red-faced with just one seat, four fewer than they had in 2014. Only T Raja Singh managed to retain his Goshamahal seat and all the BJP sitting MLAs – Musheerabad’s K Laxman, Amberpet’s G Kishan Reddy, Uppal’s NVSS Prabhakar and Khairatabad’s Chintala Ram Chandra Reddy – could not survive the BRS (then TRS) onslaught.

With the ongoing rifts within the party and lack of enthusiasm among functionaries, it remains to be seen whether the BJP can make any difference to its previous tally.