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Congress’s Telangana chief minister, Revanth Reddy, is on a mission to win 14 of 17 Lok Sabha seats in the 2024 parliamentary elections. Mr Reddy, a three-time Member of the Legislative Assembly (‘MLA’), a former Member of Lok Sabha and a former member of the Legislative Council, is leading the Congress campaign from the front for the polls scheduled on May 13, 2024. Here are the reasons why Mr Reddy is putting his credibility at stake and leading the charge for Congress in Telangana:
- Chief Minister for a full term: If the Congress wins anything less than 10 seats at the polls on May 13, the clamour to change the Chief Minister will only grow. Unlike the other aspirants to the Chief Minister’s position, Mr Reddy is not a dyed-in-the-wool congressman. Mr Reddy only joined the Congress in 2018 and, like his counterpart in Karnataka, has risen rapidly to become the Chief Minister. A victory in the range of 10 seats will solidify Mr Reddy’s position within the party and pre-empt any demands of a rotational Chief Ministership.
- Validation for victory: A section of commentators and the opposition Bharat Rashtra Samithi (‘BRS’) led by K Chandrashekar Rao (‘KCR’) have argued that the Congress victory in the December 2023 assembly polls was not a vote for Revanth but a vote against the local BRS MLAs as there is only a 1.8% difference in the votes secured by Congress and the BRS. Unlike what has been said by the leaders of the Congress, including the Chief Minister, BRS polled a substantial number of votes and secured 38 seats in a house of 119. If Mr Reddy secures victory for Congress in 10 seats amidst a three-front battle between the Congress, BRS, and the BJP, it will allow Mr Reddy to debunk the opposition’s argument and establish himself as the top choice of the Telangana electorate.
- Mortal blow to BRS: If Mr Reddy and the Congress successfully relegate BRS to third position in the polls with one or no seats, Mr Reddy will have his high command’s permission to unleash a hostile takeover of the BRS legislative party. Currently, 3 of 38 elected BRS legislators have defected to Congress. If BRS fails dismally, it will enable Mr Reddy to trigger a mass exodus just enough to secure two-thirds of the BRS legislators to overcome the application of defection law. KCR deployed an identical trick after the 2014 and 2018 assembly polls, where the legislative party of the Telugu Desam in 2014 and the Congress in 2018 were merged with BRS, lock, stock and barrel. The Telugu Desam never recovered after that, and it pushed the Congress to the sidelines for nearly 5 years until the 2023 assembly elections.
- Grip on the party: To take a dig at the Congress machinery or the lack thereof, the BRS, while in power, used to remark that the Telangana Congress has three Chief Minister aspirants in every district but no cadre. However, if Mr Reddy successfully secures 10 seats, he will be able to silence his critics within the party until the local body and cast the Telangana Congress in his mould before going into the local body polls. Mr Reddy will also have more say in appointments to the nominated posts and increase his followers in the Congress machinery and the legislative party, enabling him to thwart any leadership challenges in the future.
- Emerge as the focal point: For the last two decades, KCR has been the focal point of politics in Telangana. All other political parties or leaders only reacted to what KCR did. Even BRS’s rivals would grudgingly accept that until Congress re-emerged in the 2023 assembly elections, there were no leaders with acceptability all over Telangana. Victory in 10 seats and simultaneously relegating BRS to a distant third place will enable Mr Reddy to capitalise on his image and emerge as the new focal point of Telangana politics and step into KCR’s shoes as the one that sets the agenda.
With him leading the charge and the December assembly results invigorating the Congress machinery in Telangana, Mr Reddy hopes the 2024 Lok Sabha election will be his moment to be the state’s undisputed leader. However, many factors, including a resurgent BJP in Telangana, could come in the way of his plans and metamorphose into new challenges.
These pieces are being published as they have been received – they have not been edited/fact-checked by ThePrint