Amid Bipolar NDA vs INDIA Bloc Contest in Telangana, BRS the Biggest Loser?

While the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suffered losses in several states across the country – including its bastion in the south, Karnataka – the saffron party doubled its tally in Telangana by winning 8 out of the 17 Lok Sabha seats.

Interestingly enough, the party won 8 seats in the recently held state Assembly elections, too. In 2019, the BJP won 4 seats, which it retained this time; this is significant as the BJP tally is equal to that of the ruling Congress, which also won 8 MP seats. While the K Chandrasekhar Rao-led Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) drew a blank, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) retained its lone seat of Hyderabad.

Not just the seat share, the BJP's vote share, too, spectacularly rose by 2.5 times. But what explains this unprecedented surge in the BJP vote and seat share?

The Congress could have been satisfied with the fact that it increased its tally as compared to the three seats it won in the 2019 parliamentary elections. But with the Lok Sabha elections having come close on the heels of the party's significant win in the Assembly elections, the Congress, perhaps, expected a much better performance.

And precisely for this reason, Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy has accused KCR of hobnobbing with the BJP, resulting in 8 wins for the lotus camp. The Congress has alleged that the BRS has a clandestine deal with the BJP – an allegation that the party has never substantiated with irrefutable evidence.

Perhaps, this was a shrewd attempt by the Congress to peddle a narrative around the saffron surge, in a bid to dismiss the talk of the BJP emerging as a challenge to the Congress.

Notwithstanding the allegations of a pink-saffron deal, the fact remains that the unprecedented BJP rise is essentially due to a massive shift of the BRS vote to the BJP. The statistical evidence reveals this beyond any doubt. To understand this phenomenon, let's peruse the voting numbers. 

Where Did the BRS Votes Go?

The Congress has marginally improved its vote share in the current Lok Sabha elections to a little over 40 percent from little less than 40 percent that it polled during the Assembly elections held in December 2023.

Despite the Opposition's cacophony over the alleged non-implementation of promises made during the Assembly elections, the Congress has retained its vote share. Therefore, the BJP surge is not related to any possible anti-incumbency against the Congress-led state government.

Meanwhile, the BRS vote share nosedived from 37 percent in the Assembly elections to around 17 percent in the current Lok Sabha elections – a mind-boggling 20 percentage point dip. This massive fall was despite the BRS supremo KCR's hectic campaign over these last few months.

Juxtapose this with the rise in the BJP's vote share. The BJP polled nearly 35 percent in the current Lok Sabha polls, which is a spectacular increase when compared to nearly 20 percent in 2019 Lok Sabha elections and about 14 percent in the 2023 Assembly elections. The BJP increased its vote share in the current Lok Sabha elections by 21 percent as compared to the Assembly elections, while the BRS suffered a 20 percent decline in its vote share.

So, the entire vote lost by the BRS has shifted to the BJP as the Congress vote share remains stable. This resulted in a humiliating defeat for the BRS as the pink party stood third in almost all the Parliament constituencies.

This is certainly not because of any conspiracy or a clandestine understanding between the BRS and BJP, as no party would deliberately sound a death knell to itself by deserting such huge chunk of votes.

A Bipolar Battle

The debilitating electoral performance of the BRS is largely due to the political context in which the parliamentary elections were held. It was a spirited battle between the BJP-led NDA and the Congress-led INDIA bloc.

The BRS was not part of any of these two contending national-level political formations due to a state-specific political configuration.

Realising this inherent vulnerability, which was beyond the BRS' control, KCR tried hard to promote a narrative that neither of these two alliances will have a majority, and that the regional parties, including the BRS, will play a key role in national politics.

But such a fallacious argument could cut no ice with the Telangana electorate. KCR has even claimed that his party would win up to 14 seats and he was also in the race for the PM post. Even a political novice could dismiss it as a figment of imagination. Such an overexaggerated prediction by KCR in the run-up to the elections was self-deceptive and self-defeating.

Not just the BRS, the non-NDA and non-INDIA parties like the YSR Congress, the Biju Janata Dal, and the AIADMK suffered heavily as the Parliament elections saw an intensely polarised battle between the NDA and INDIA, which is evident from the poll results too.

KCR pitched his campaign around the theme that the interest of Telangana would only be met by strong presence of the BRS in Parliament. This did not convince the voters as the anti-KCR sentiment was still afresh.

BJP To Replace BRS as Main Opponent?

The moot question now is whether the BJP would sustain this momentum to replace the BRS as a principal political player in the opposition space in Telangana. The ensuing elections to the local bodies will test the saffron mettle.

In fact, the BJP squandered away a similar opportunity that it got prior to the Assembly elections owing to consecutive bypoll wins and an impressive show in the elections to Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation.

This was due to intense infighting in the state BJP, strategic mistakes by the central leadership, lack of local leadership, excessive reliance on defectors, leading to disenchantment in the party-loyal cadre, etc.

In fact, the Congress, too, failed to realise the impending challenge from BJP. Since the Assembly elections, the Congress continued to focus its attack on KCR and failed to present a strong anti-BJP narrative in the state.

This strategic deficiency also helped the BJP capitalise on the prevailing political situation. While KCR was moving heaven and earth to retain his vote base, the local BRS leaders preferred the BJP to Congress as they felt that a saffron win in the parliamentary elections would not pose any serious threat to them in the elections to local bodies, which are expected to be held later this year.

The projected inevitability of Narendra Modi coming back as prime minister also helped the Telangana BJP make gains. Though the BJP lost ground in its strongholds in the Hindi-speaking states, the saffron party fared relatively well in South India.

The Telangana political landscape, therefore, continues to be divided among three parties, with the BJP and BRS competing with each other to grab the anti-Congress opposition space, the result of which would define the nature of political contest here in the days to come.

(Prof K Nageshwar is a senior political analyst, faculty member of Osmania University, and a former MLC. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)