Telangana: BJP scouts for winning horses

Hyderabad: Amid speculations of early Assembly elections in Telangana, the Telangana BJP leadership has begun a hunt for potential candidates in all the 119 assembly constituencies. A group of senior BJP leaders have already started a big exercise to poach strong TRS and Congress leaders in many assembly segments.

The BJP leadership has found that it has been facing a big challenge in at least 70 assembly constituencies where the party's assembly in-charges were not strong enough to give tough fight to the ruling TRS, and Congress in a few segments. Except in the assembly segments which come under the Greater Hyderabad limits, the party was deprived of strong leadership in the majority of assembly segments in the districts.

Out of 119 segments, the party was maintaining strong leadership in 40 segments only.

Top party sources said that BJP state unit president Bandi Sanjay Kumar, senior leaders K Laxman, A Jitendar Reddy, G Vivek, N Indrasena Reddy, DK Aruna and others have been entrusted the responsibility of identifying the "winning horses" in majority of the segments before the elections. As the BJP top leadership hinted at early elections in the beginning of 2023, the state leaders intensified the efforts to search for strong contestants.

"Most of the assembly in-charges are weak. The only option before the party is to poach the strong leaders from TRS and Congress which have been maintaining strong leadership at every constituency level. Many of the strong leaders in the two parties either denied party tickets or were defeated in the last assembly elections," said a senior party leader.

Some of them were ready to join the party and a few were seeking some more time. For instance, TRS senior leader K Shashidhar Reddy was denied a party ticket in the 2018 assembly elections.

The party high command also did not fulfil the promise of giving the MLC post to him. Reddy established a strong cadre on his own in Kodad. The TRS leader is keen to contest the next elections. If he is denied a party ticket again, the possibility of contesting elections on a BJP ticket is not ruled out.

Party sources said that the BJP was eying to poach the TRS defeated candidates from nearly 15 assembly segments where the Congress and TDP won. The victorious opposition MLAs switched their loyalties to the ruling party. Most of the defeated leaders were not sure to get the TRS party ticket in the next elections. Similarly, the second-grade strong leadership of TRS and Congress in every assembly segment were already contacted. All of them would be consulted again and convinced to fight for the BJP in the next elections. "Soon after the potential candidates are identified, the party leadership will arrange a meeting with high command to make them join the BJP. By 2022 end, the party targets to identify at least 50 potential candidates in the rural assembly constituencies," senior leader who did not want to be named told The Hans India.