The Bhartiya Janata Party had launched an extraordinary campaign for the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation polls, whose counting is ongoing today. Since November 20, the saffron party launched an unprecedented offensive against the TRS and AIMIM. The results of the BJP’s tremendous efforts are today bearing fruit, as the party leads on over 40 wards at the time of this report being filed. Of course, these leads may change a bit, but roughly speaking, the saffron party has made deep inroads into the highly polarized and politically saturated Hyderabad region.
Needless to say, the performance of the BJP, which is hovering around the 40 mark, has seen an unprecedented rise, owing to the party’s hard work in the runup to the GHMC polls. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, BJP National President JP Nadda and the top cream of leaders from the party were among those who campaigned in Hyderabad, resulting in the kind of tally surge which we are today witnessing out of the all-important municipality.
At the time of filing this report, the TRS was surging ahead with its tally in the late-60’s, while Owaisi’s AIMIM had won 17 seats already. The rise of the BJP from mere 4 seats in 2016 GHMC polls, to the late ’30s, or if luck serves them right, even ’40s, is a huge feat, to say the least. The battle for Telangana is now an open one, and the TRS and BJP are more or less on a level playing field when it comes to contesting the assembly elections in the state in 2023.
The BJP went all-guns-blazing against the AIMIM and TRS for the GHMC polls, something which they are expected to retain as their campaign style in the state. Whether it be changing Hyderabad’s name to Bhagyanagar, or top BJP leaders visiting the city donning saffron, the Bhartiya Janata Party has already given KCR and Owaisi major chills.
So aggressive was the BJP’s campaign for the Hyderabad polls, that the party even dared the AIMIM, specifically MLA Akbaruddin Owaisi and his minions, to try and demolish the memorials built for former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao and former Chief Minister NT Rama Rao.BJP State president Bandi Sanjay Kumar had said that if the memorials of PVNR or NTR are demolished, BJP workers will pull down Darussalam, the AIMIM headquarters at Aghapura in Old City, Hyderabad.
The BJP’s surge in the GHMC wards will definitely boost their morale, and the party will most certainly fight an all-out battle against the TRS in the state for the assembly elections three years down the line.