BJP, a resurgent political force in Telangana, is all set to take on the KCR led TRS in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) polls. Presently TRS is the ruling party of GHMC with 99 seats out of 150 followed by AIMIM which has 44 seats.
The saffron party is being helped by Telugu superstar Pawan Kalyan who agreed to campaign for BJP in GHMC polls. “Election results in Bihar and Dubbak shows that everywhere, in every corner of the country, they want the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. I hope Hyderabad emerges as a developed world city under the leadership of the Prime Minister,” Mr Kalyan said.
“With all my heart I hope that a BJP candidate becomes Mayor of Hyderabad,” he added.
Kalyan is the President of Jana Sena party, which was founded by him in 2014 to fight for the rights of each and every common person. Being a very popular figure in the Telugu film industry, he is known for raising the issue of looting Hindu temples under the regime of Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy.
Greater Hyderabad has a large Muslim population and it is also home to the Owaisi brothers under whose reign Muslims of the city are being radicalized and oppression against Hindus is evident every day. Given the fact that KCR is already an ally of Owaisi in the Telangana assembly, the only party which can fight for Hindus in the state is BJP.
It was only a few days ago that Karthika Reddy, the former mayor of GHMC and a senior Congress leader, joined BJP. Congress, which used to be a major political force in the state till 2014 and the single largest party in GHMC after the elections of 2009, was reduced to only two seats- less than BJP which won four seats in the 2016 GHMC election.
BJP bagged the second-highest number of seats in the Greater Hyderabad region in the 2019 general elections along with winning the Secunderabad seat. Besides, BJP also won three more seats and emerged as the second-largest party of the state, winning four seats out of 17. Moreover, the party even won the Dubbak assembly by-polls.
Dubbak constituency is situated between the two key constituencies – Gajwel, represented by Chief Minister KCR, and Siddipet, held by KCR’s nephew T. Harish Rao (also the state finance minister). So, the saffron party has already made its presence felt in the TRS’ fortress and is looking forward to snatching the GHMC with the support of Pawan Kalyan.
The GHMC polls will be held on December 1 and the counting is supposed to take place on December 4. With Congress being a spent force in the state of Telangana as well as in Hyderabad, the major opposition to the saffron party would come from TRS and AIMIM. While TRS is already in alliance with AIMIM in the assembly, both parties will be fighting the GHMC polls separately.
TRS is eying for Hindu votes as the majority of Muslim votes will definitely go to Owaisi’s AIMIM and BJP plans to replace TRS as the party of Hindus because KCR’s ‘secular’ credentials are a matter of public knowledge. The Hindus, who are regularly being oppressed by AIMIM’s party workers, would definitely prefer BJP over TRS and therefore the saffron party is set to triumph in the upcoming GHMC polls.
