The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is now desperately seeking to regain its lost glory at least in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh by vigorously taking up the cause of a separate State as well as people’s issues in the region.
Telangana was once considered a stronghold of BJP with a sizeable number of its senior leaders like Ch Vidyasagar Rao and Bandaru Dattatreya making a mark even at the national level and worked as Union Ministers in Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.
The national party’s influence, however, waned gradually after it aligned with the Telugu Desam Party in the late 1990s. Luck did not favour BJP even after it snapped ties with TDP and raised the Telangana slogan again after 2004.
In the 2004 and 2009 elections, the BJP had to be content with just two seats each in the state Assembly while drawing a blank in the Lok Sabha.
The State party president G Kishan Reddy is representing Amberpet Assembly constituency in the city here and Nizamabad seat was represented by Lakshminarayana.
While the party has not much base in the Rayalaseema region of Andhra Pradesh, it has eroded significantly in coastal Andhra after it started espousing the cause of Telangana.
BJP leader from coastal Andhra - M. Venkaiah Naidu - too has become an advocate for bifurcation of the State much to the chagrin of the party rank and file in Andhra-Rayalaseema regions.
The revived struggle for a separate Telangana State late last year came as a blessing in disguise for the BJP to reinvent itself in the region and emerge as a potent force.
The BJP is trying to cash in on factors like the growing disenchantment with the TDP and lack of a credible political alternative in Telangana and emerge as a formidable opposition to the Congress whenever a separate state becomes a reality.
“There has been a conspicuous effort by the BJP to capture the political space in Telangana by taking an aggressive part in the ongoing agitation for statehood. The party leadership is clearly focusing its attention on re-building its base in Telangana by not only rejuvenating the rank and file but also by taking up people’s issues,” a senior political analyst here noted.
The ‘Palle Pilupu’ (visit to villages) programme launched by BJP on Gandhi Jayanthi is one such step in this direction.
The programme is aimed at establishing contact with people at their doorsteps and addressing issues of public concern like poor healthcare facilities, erratic power supply and lack of access to education besides other basic problems in the countryside.
In the five-day programme, more than 700 party functionaries including senior leaders have been participating in Palle Pilupu to meet people and look into their problems.
“Over 3,000 villages will be covered during the five-day programme. Later a comprehensive report enlisting the peoples’ problems will be submitted to the state government,” State president G. Kishan Reddy said.
In August this year, the BJP undertook a 11-day ’Telangana Martyrs Memorial Yatra’ to console families of those who ended their lives for the cause of a separate State.
This evoked good response from people in the region, raising the spirits of the BJP leaders after they covered about 500 villages in Nalgonda, Mahbubnagar, Ranga Reddy, Hyderabad and Medak in south Telangana.
“Even the ongoing Palle Pilupu is evoking tremendous response from villagers. There is a severe lack of basic amenities in the villages and lots of complaints are pouring in,” senior BJP leader and former Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya told PTI.
The BJP’s top priority now, through such programmes, is to strengthen the organisation and build a strong base so as to emerge as a potent force once Telangana State becomes a reality.
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