Hyderabad: When former Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) addressed a massive rally in Jagtial district on 20 April, many expected him to go for the jugular, put the sitting chief minister on the mat, and tear into the Congress’s partial roll-out of the six election guarantees it promised in 2023 when it assumed power.
However, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) founder chose to treat his 30 minutes differently.
At the Praja Aashirvada Sabha, he refrained from any mention of Chief Minister Revanth Reddy or his cabinet, and yet derided the Congress for what he called its “confused governance”.
He invoked every scheme his government introduced during his nine-year tenure from 2014 to 2023, and at the same time told the audience that their “pitiable condition” was a reflection of what he called their “poor electoral choice” to vote the Congress to power.
He said he was ready to “battle for Telangana” once again, even as he elevated himself to Telangana’s ‘Jaati Pita’, or father of the community, in the same breath.
Partymen and political observers described KCR’s appearance on the political stage after a year, along with his announcement that he was confident the BRS would form the government in the 2028 assembly elections, as his “comeback moment”. KCR was last seen in April 2025 when the BRS, the party he founded in 2000, celebrated its silver jubilee anniversary in Warangal.
“I did not come out of the farmhouse all these days because I wanted to give a chance to the Congress government to do some good work after offering Telangana to them on a platter,” he said, evoking a thunderous applause from supporters at the Vivekananda Stadium in Jagtial.
“But I decided to come out now since every promise the Congress made to everyone, not just the farmers, is just bogus, not a bonus,” he added.
Political observers said KCR sees an opportunity to reboot his party and take control of the narrative with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) failing to occupy the main opposition space even two and a half years after the 2023 assembly election.
Moreover, with the exodus from the BRS having steadied after 10 MLAs switched to the Congress in 2024, the BRS is believed to have steadied itself for its next leap.
And analysts said a political opportunity seems to have presented itself with discontent brewing amongst the public due to only a partial fulfillment of the six guarantees and non-payment of various arrears.
“Even as the political opportunities have presented themselves, KCR’s job at hand is to help the party recover its lost vote share in the Assembly and Parliament elections. His leadership will be crucial to steer the party in the 2028 and 2029 elections,” K. Nageshwar, former MLC and former professor at Osmania University’s Department of Communication and Journalism, told ThePrint.
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Restoring lost party vigour
Though visibly frail, the 72-year-old KCR spoke firmly amid criticism that a fall and fracture he suffered in December 2023 had led to the BRS’ tumble in the state panchayat elections last year.
“His overall tone of the speech set the tone for the BRS’s comeback. His political confidence, recounting of past achievements, and his criticism of the current administration were on point. It reminded us of the KCR during the Telangana revolution,” Thula Uma, a party senior leader, told ThePrint.
That BRS working president and KCR’s son, K.T. Rama Rao, and his nephew, T. Harish Rao, chose to skip the Jagtial event, which observers suggested the event was planned for KCR to return to form.
Political observers who have seen KCR since his time in the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in 1983, as a minister, and later deputy speaker of the Andhra Pradesh assembly, said his withdrawal from public life and rare appearances have been episodic.
Nageshwar told ThePrint that “being out of the scene for weeks or months” was a strategy KCR had crafted even during the days he was leading the revolt for a separate state in the early 2000s.
“Even as chief minister, he never let himself be seen. KCR was always a macro person. With an able second-in-command force, he used to leave the micro, tactical battles for his deputies in the party or the government to handle,” Nageshwar said.
However, party leaders told ThePrint that KCR’s re-emergence on the state’s political scene was not just to welcome a fellow septuagenarian, Jeevan Reddy, into the BRS from the Congress.
They said the six-time MLA Jeevan Reddy’s joining was an occasion to bridge the gap between the party and its cadre, and between the people and the leadership.
With the party’s muted performance in the panchayat elections held in December 2025, and losses in both the bye elections to the Secunderabad Cantonment and Jubilee Hills constituencies, KCR’s presence could reinstate the lost vigour among the cadre, BRS leaders said.
However, Telakapalli Ravi, a former journalist and senior political analyst, reckoned that his daughter Kavitha’s new party has dampened the jubilation around KCR’s return.
KCR’s Praja Aashirvada Sabha was organised just five days before his estranged daughter announced her new party, Telangana Rashtra Sena, from Munnerabad, on 25 April.
“This is not KCR’s real comeback moment. It was meant to be around 2027, closer to the elections, but it could not be deferred further because of Kavitha’s party. Kavitha, calling her party by the same name TRS, has forced him to come out into the open and replay the rhetoric of his achievements,” T. Ravi told ThePrint.
While the extent to which Kavitha could dent the BRS’s prospects is yet to be seen, Ravi said that KCR’s handling of Kavitha’s direct attacks on her father would be watched closely.
“If not for Kavitha, KCR’s comeback mission would have been slated for the end of 2027, a year before the assembly elections. A year from now is when KTR too has planned his padayatra across the state,” T. Ravi said.
“The dynamics of politics and the economic implications on parties have changed over the last 10 years. So, it is very difficult to sustain the momentum if the opposition takes on the ruling party 2.5 years before the election,’ he added.
But what party leaders describe as KCR’s “mahayagna to rebuild the state” has begun.
The party held its first plenary session on 27 April at Telangana Bhavan, its headquarters in Hyderabad. KCR chaired the meeting for the first time after his party’s defeat in 2023, when it won just 39 of the 119 seats in the state Assembly.
Party leaders told ThePrint that activating the membership drive, reorganising the party at the district level, and planning the future roadmap were part of the agenda.
KCR ended his speech with his trademark aggression.
“Even if I have to be reborn a thousand times, I will continue to fight for Telangana. Even if they take a hundred births, they cannot separate me from the people,” he said.
(Edited by Sugita Katyal)