Hyderabad: Congress leader and former president of the Telangana unit of National Student Union of India (NSUI), Bhargav Deshpande joined the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) Sunday, saying that he was unhappy with the Congress leadership, which “is not functioning in line with the Congress high command”.
The leader’s exit mounts more trouble for Chief Minister Revanth Reddy, who is already dealing with multiple crises in the state due to the El Niño phenomenon.
Deshpande, who has also served twice as the Adilabad District Congress Committee (DCC) president, was inducted into the BRS by the party’s Working President K.T. Rama Rao (K.T.R.). The Congress is systematically alienating “Original Congress” leaders, he alleged.
“I joined the Congress when I was a teenager in the presence of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, when Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy was the chief minister of (united) Andhra Pradesh. However, the Congress party has now completely changed, more so after Revanth Reddy joined the party in 2017. It is not the original Congress. The Congress leadership in the state is not functioning in line with the Congress high command,” Deshpande told media persons outside K.T.R.’s residence Sunday afternoon.
He added that he decided to join BRS as senior Congress leaders in the Telangana Cabinet were not responding to his pleas to set right the party’s perception at the grassroots level.
The political shift is significant since Adilabad in north Telangana is considered the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) stronghold, and Deshpande’s exit would not only weaken the Congress in the region, but almost make it a two-cornered contest between BJP and BRS in the upcoming Graduate MLC elections in the state.
“With two years left for the Telangana election, I have only one message for the workers who are loyal to the Congress party. Leave the Congress, save Telangana,” Deshpande remarked.
While election to the Mahbubnagar-Ranga Reddy-Hyderabad and Warangal-Khammam-Nalgonda graduate constituencies is scheduled only early next year, with graduates from 77 assembly constituencies expected to vote, it is being treated seriously by all parties—with some calling it a referendum for the 2028 assembly polls.
Deshpande’s exit comes months after senior party leader T. Jeevan Reddy joined BRS in April at a massive public event at Jagtiyal, with former CM and BRS founder K. Chandrashekar Rao (K.C.R.) welcoming him. Jeevan Reddy was immediately appointed the party’s general secretary by K.C.R. Like Deshpande, he too had said that he quit the Congress feeling humiliated by the state leadership, severing his 42-year-old association with the party.
To mark Deshpande’s induction and protest against the Congress’s alleged poor handling of the water and farm crises, the BRS is holding a farmers’ rally in Adilabad on 1 November. Party leaders present at the joining ceremony said that more Congress functionaries are expected to join the BRS at the ‘Rythu Garjana’ (farmers’ roar) rally.
On the same day, CM Revanth Reddy will be joining the Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi to protest against the electoral rolls revision exercise, along with 15,000 Congress workers from the state.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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