The freshly created state of Telangana is about to face their second elections after the premature dissolution of the state assembly by CM K. Chandrashekhar Rao and his Telangana Rashtra Samiti. The state is extremely crucial for most political parties in India especially BJP, who realize the importance of Telangana as a gateway for their plans to make inroads in other southern states of India. Despite the lack of a strong leader base in the state, BJP is ready to give it their very best in the upcoming assembly elections for Telangana. This optimist attitude was reflected extremely well in the recently held party meet at Hyderabad. BJP president Amit Shah addressed the workers, reassuring them that BJP will win the state with flying colors.
Amit Shah attacked the incumbent CM KCR for conducting assembly polls earlier than expected, while igoring the needs of the people of Telangana and resorting to the classic minority appeasement like any other so called ‘secular’ parties. Amit Shah stressed upon the fact that BJP’s victory is incomplete without having made inroads into states like Telangana, Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu etc. Addressing the party cadres present Amit Shah shared his secret mantra with them. He said, “For 15 days, if the Shakti Kendra president goes to their respective booths and follows the 23 point guidelines suggested by the party, I guarantee you that we can achieve victory in Telangana.”
To give confidence to the BJP workers, Amit Shah reminded them of how BJP won in states like Tripura and Manipur through exercising a precise strategy. He said that they can win Telangana too in a similar manner. Long story short, Amit Shah reiterated his principle of micro managing the assembly elections on booth level, which evoked an overwhelming response from all the cadres present and the Shakti Kendra presidents present at the meet.
The question which remains is how many seats would the party be able to win by exercising their booth to booth campaign policy, with sharp micro management. This tried and tested technique is surely going to work again this time as it has worked countless times in the past in states like UP, Assam, Tripura. The unexpected haul of seats which came from these states in the grasp of BJP had given worries to the political analysts and competing parties too. However, no opportunity comes without challenges and for winning Telangana BJP will have to face its fair shares of challenges. While there are no doubts on the intentions of the party president Amit Shah, the two main obstacles in the road to winning Telangana are: linguistic barriers and a prominent face in the state wing of BJP.
In the states where BJP had previously won using the booth to booth micromanaging technique, they had a prominent local face which drew people to the party folds like no one else could, Sarbananda Sonowal in Assam, Biplab Deb in Tripura or Yogi Adityanath in UP were well recognized faces who enjoyed massive public support. They were not only fluent in the local languages but were equally popular among the masses. It would be interesting to see if Amit Shah manages to get someone as charismatic as the ones mentioned for Telangana, a crowd puller face from the local circles. If Amit Shah can manage to find or make someone as popular as these BJP leaders from the northern and north eastern part of India in the south, come what may, nobody can stop BJP from winning Telangana by a huge margin. The taboo that BJP can only win seats in the cow belt too would be broken if it manages to win over the state this time.
It is also being said that Congress, TDP, CPI and the newly formed Telangana Janasamithi Party have joined hands to take on TRS in the state, which makes it a three way contest which could immensely benefit Amit Shah and BJP in Telangana.