hyderabad
After being ousted from power by high anti-incumbency among certain sections of the electorate and lure of the Congress promises, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leadership has shifted its focus to Lok Sabha elections due in April-May by recuperating from the Assembly polls’ loss with not much time left to infuse confidence among the party ranks.
To begin with, working president of the party K.T. Rama Rao held a meeting on Sunday with the party leaders of Chevella Parliamentary constituency, including sitting MP G. Ranjith Reddy, former Ministers P. Sabitha Indra Reddy and P. Mahender Reddy and two other MLAs T. Prakash Goud (Rajendranagar) and K. Yadaiah (Chevella).
B. Vinod Kumar (Karimnagar), G. Nagesh (Adilabad), N. Nageswara Rao (Khammam) and K. Kavitha (Nizamabad) are also certain to be fielded by the party again. The party has won three, two, zero and three Assembly seats out of seven each, respectively, in the four Lok Sabha constituencies.
According to the party sources, the leadership is mulling change of candidates in at least a few of the nine sitting MPs the party has including the change necessitated for Medak seat with the election of K. Prabhakar Reddy to the Assembly. Scouting for new candidates has also become necessary for the party leadership in case of Malkajgiri and Bhongir Lok Sabha seats, lost with small margins in 2019.
While the candidate for Malkajgiri in 2019 election M. Rajasekhar Reddy is elected as an MLA recently, party nominee for Bhongir Dr. B. Narsaiah Goud, who was the party MP for the 2014-19 terms, joined Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in October last year (2022).
The party is also representing Peddapalli (B. Venkatesh Netha), Zaheerabad (B.B. Patil), Mahabubnagar (M. Srinivas Reddy), P. Ramulu (Nagarkurnool), Warangal (P. Dayakar) and Mahabubabad (M. Kavitha) Lok Sabha seats now. Of them, BRS could barely manage to hold on to Zaheerabad with a slender margin of 6,229 votes, while others could win comfortably with 77,829 votes being the lowest margin among them in 2019.
Introspection
“We have been taking stock of the defeat in the Assembly elections with a post-mortem of the results to know what did us (the party) in after over nine years of seamless development of the State and wide reach of welfare measures. We are working on how to weather the changed political scenario and put up a good show in Lok Sabha polls,” a senior leader stated.
