No alliance with BJP ahead of 2028 Telangana Assembly polls, says KTR

BRS working president K T Rama Rao said the party would contest the next Telangana general elections independently and ruled out an alliance with the BJP. He also discussed delimitation, artificial intelligence, governance, Telangana's development and its innovation ecosystem

Hyderabad: Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) will go it alone in the next general elections in Telangana, party working president K T Rama Rao said during an interaction after delivering a Distinguished Public Lecture at O P Jindal Global University in Sonipat on Wednesday.

Rama Rao was asked whether the BRS could align with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ahead of the 2028 Telangana Assembly elections. This elicited an unambiguous response from Rama Rao: “There will be no alliance with the BJP.” He was fielding questions during the interaction after delivering the lecture on “Innovation in Governance: The Story of a Startup State.”

---

Fielding a variety of questions on political, governance and technology-related issues from the participants, K T Rama Rao said his party would have no objection to supporting a delimitation bill if the overall increase in Lok Sabha seats was carried out proportionately.

“Southern states account for 24 per cent of the representation in Lok Sabha. If there is an overall increase in the number of seats proportionately, then we will have no problem supporting the delimitation bill,” he said.

Responding to a question on artificial intelligence and technological changes, he said apprehensions had accompanied every major technological transition. “Every change in technology was questioned, same as AI. We need to adopt it and move on,” he said.

In his lecture, the BRS working president spoke about Telangana’s development journey and presented the State’s experience through the twin concepts of “certainty and possibility”. He said governance should create certainty through basic infrastructure and reliable public services while simultaneously building ecosystems that enable innovation, entrepreneurship and new opportunities. He highlighted Telangana’s initiatives in irrigation, agriculture, drinking water and power.

Speaking about the Kaleshwaram Project, he described it as an engineering response to the historical challenge of taking Godavari water to drought-prone regions of Telangana. He also referred to the rise in rice production from about 44.4 lakh tonnes in 2014-15 to 168.8 lakh tonnes in 2023-24.

He also outlined Telangana’s innovation ecosystem, referring to T-Hub, WE-Hub, T-Works and TASK and their roles in entrepreneurship, women-led enterprises, prototyping, hardware innovation and connecting young talent with industry. He cited Skyroot as an example of the ecosystem supporting the journey from incubation and prototyping to a market-ready company. He urged students and young people to approach constraints as design problems and focus on learning, iteration and execution.

He thanked O P Jindal Global University for the opportunity to share Telangana’s development journey and interact with its students and faculty.