Telangana BJP President Bandi Sanjay is driving the single point agenda demanding the government to celebrate Telangana Liberation Day. Not that the leaders are against it as the issue has been the official line of the party for decades, what worries them is the timing. A senior party leader quipped, “People are going through a rough time due to the Coronavirus pandemic. They fear for their lives. It would be hard to consolidate people on the topic to reap political dividends against the ruling TRS.”
Currently, the politics in the State is revolving around demands to confer Bharata Ratna to former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao. The Karimnagar MP joined the chorus and criticized Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao for invoking PV’s name to gain political mileage. AIMIM has been opposing both official celebrations on Telangana Liberation Day as well as conferring Bharat Ratna to the former PM.
BJP leaders opine that it is not the time to take up this issue because there are more serious problems for the saffron party to deal with. The party has 22,000 committees out of 32,000 booth committees in the State. It could not make any headway in forming the remaining 10,000 booth committees. Strengthening the existing booth committees remains an unfulfilled task for the last couple of years.
The party has also suffered after losing four of its five MLAs in 2019, exposing its dwindling urban voter base across polling booths in 155 divisions of the GHMC. It is more important now to make course corrections to regain lost voters and retain existing ones. But will Bandi listen to the sane voices within the party and outside of it? Party Karyakarthas in GHMC region want Bandi to focus more on peoples’ issues and take concrete measures to strengthen the party for the ensuing civic body elections.
