On 22 October, the Bharatiya Janata Party released the first list of MLA candidates for 52 out of the total 119 constituencies in Telangana for the upcoming assembly election. Out of the 52, 38 were general category seats and the BJP allotted 20 of these seats to backward classes—a staggering 52 per cent. The other 14 were reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and therefore need to be allotted to the respective communities as per the delimitation of constituencies.
Coupled with this announcement, the decision of BJP State President and Union Minister G Kishan Reddy to not contest in the assembly elections sends out a clear message that the party, if elected to power, will put forth a Chief Minister who belongs to the backward classes. It would serve all in the Sab Ka Saath, Sab Ka Vikas Model.
Under the same tent
On the face of it, this makes sense. The backward classes account for more than 50 per cent of the Telangana electorate. In the last decade, they have started to display an agency of their own in the economic and political spheres. The rule-based economic framework and architecture accelerated by the Narendra Modi Government has also reduced the influence of traditionally powerful communities in decision-making when availing government services, bank loans, or any other interactions that require interfacing with the government.
Telangana has seen many backward-class community leaders gaining prominence and popularity. Therefore, their support no longer needs to be curated by the upper classes. In fact, the notion that the powerful Reddy and Velama communities of Telangana still control voting choices in rural areas is now becoming an old-fashioned intellectual position, as it has been totally shattered and finds neither evidence nor rationale on the ground.
The BJP also has a large number of popular backward-class leaders such as former BJP state president Sanjay Bandi, Nizamabad MP Arvind Dharmapuri, and Rajya Sabha MP K Laxman. The National President of the BJP’s OBC Morcha, Laxman belongs to the Munnuru Kapu community that constitutes approximately 6 per cent of the population in Telangana. Another BJP leader, Eatala Rajender—the former finance and health minister of the state and a one-time confidante of Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao—belongs to the Mudiraj community, which has a sizable number of voters and can influence around 40 constituencies in Telangana, making up approximately 7 per cent of the state’s population.
The removal of Rajender from the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and the efforts made by the party to finish him off politically while contesting on a BJP ticket from Huzurabad in 2021 has united the entire Mudiraj community, leading to a near one-sided polarisation.
Given that the Mudiraj community is traditionally involved in masonry, their presence tends to be in cities and urban clusters such as the erstwhile districts of Hyderabad, Rangareddy, Medak and Mahabubnagar, where they incrementally add to the BJP vote share.
Meanwhile, the agrarian-based Munnuru Kapu community is concentrated in the North Telangana districts of Adilabad, Nirmal, and Nizamabad districts with more than 12 per cent of the population in this region. These areas also have had strong BJP presence, local leadership, and grassroots support. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, when Aravind vanquished K Kavitha, the daughter of CM Rao, not many were surprised. Therefore, the BJP seems to have done its homework as far as North Telangana is concerned.
Also read: BJP has more OBC CMs than Congress. It yields political gains for the party
Subaltern strategy
There are many risks with this strategy and the one that stares at the BJP’s face is that the backward class community is not homogenous. The backing of two such communities does not mean that others, that are also politically active such as the Yadavs and Gouds (the traditional toddy tapping community), will come together in this rainbow coalition. However, by bringing the political representation of backward classes to the fore and by delivering on this promise in the Union Council of Ministers, the BJP has the credibility and the political power to convince them to join the big tent for the backward classes. The Union Council of Ministers of the Modi-led government comprises 27 OBC and 12 Scheduled Caste ministers, which makes the Union cabinet the “rainbow council”. For this, the BJP can thank their talisman in Prime Minister Narendra Modi who himself belongs to the backward class community.
It is not just the backward class community that the BJP aims to bring into this tent; the party is also trying to use the appointment of the first tribal woman President, Draupadi Murmu, to bring together the ST communities, including the Lambadas, Koyas, and Gonds, who can influence the outcomes in about 12 assembly segments.
Reddy has already promised to increase reservations of Tribals to 10 per cent from the current six per cent without inviting adverse Supreme Court judgments by breaching the 50 per cent mark. The recent sanction of the Sammakka Sarakka Central Tribal University and the naming of it after the mother-daughter duo that is especially revered by the tribal community is also expected to create goodwill among the tribal community.
The least spoken of is the BJP’s aim to get the Madiga community of Scheduled Castes on their side. The party has been wooing them as they are the largest community in Telangana with close to 10 per cent of the total population and 60 per cent of the Scheduled Castes in Telangana.
Efforts are being made by the union government to build a consensus among the various states toward sub-categorisation of reservation among the Scheduled castes. On his visit to Warangal earlier in July, Modi met Manda Krishna Madiga, who leads the Madiga Reservation Porata Samithi (MRPS) that has been fighting for sub-categorisation of Scheduled Castes. The Malas have got a majority of the benefits from reservations compared to Madigas and other SC communities. When the MRPS leader met Modi, he requested an early resolution on the matter, and the Prime Minister was sympathetic to his cause.
It remains to be seen whether the BJP’s efforts in going with such a subaltern strategy will prove successful. In other states where the BJP attempted the strategy, they have seen mixed results. While it has worked spectacularly in Uttar Pradesh, it did not achieve the desired results in West Bengal. It will be interesting to see the outcome of this effort to consolidate the backward class vote in Telangana as no Chief Minister has come from those communities since Independence. The people of Telangana will decide on 30 November. However, nobody can find fault with the BJP’s effort to deepen democracy and increase the political representation of the marginalised communities.
Amarnath Sarangula is an entrepreneur and National Advisory Council member for
the Ministry of Animal Husbandry. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)