- Saturday, April 19, 2025
Two-time anti-incumbency hit the 69-year-old leader, who tried to capitalise on his government’s economic policies and welfare measures, hard.
By: Shubham Ghosh
K CHANDRASEKHAR RAO or KCR, as he is popularly known, tried to project himself as a national alternative to prime minister Narendra Modi in the months ahead of the 2024 general elections and launched a fierce attack against the latter. But the chief minister of the southern Indian state of Telangana and the supremo of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), formerly Telangana Rashtra Samithi, was found to be trailing in one of the two seats he contested in the state elections last month, while the Indian National Congress was predicted to dethrone him as the CM after almost a decade.
Results of elections in Telangana and three other states — Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh — were announced on Sunday (3).
While Rao and his party enjoyed popularity in Telangana since it was created in 2014 as the people credited the leader and BRS for making the statehood movement a reality. But after winning two elections it looked that Rao was facing a strong anti-incumbency mood, thanks to corruption and discrimination in implementation of welfare schemes and employment and allegations that Rao and his son KT Rama Rao, the state’s information technology minister, did not tolerate dissent.
Read: Modi’s BJP sweeps 3 Indian state ahead of 2024 general elections
The loss of power in Telangana months ahead of the general elections next year will undoubtedly deliver a blow to the 69-year-old leader’s national ambition. As a leader who claimed to script a commendable economic progress for a new state and seen as a potential challenger to Modi’s legacy of development in the western state of Gujarat, this defeat would see him squandering the advantage among the opposition leaders who harbour the hope of replacing Modi after the next general elections.
Read: A state leader chooses to make elections in India’s Rajasthan a presidential battle with Modi
Rao targeted Modi on several occasions all these months as it gave him more visibility among the opposition leaders and conveyed the message to the opposition camp that he is a man who can challenge Modi, India’s most popular leader at the moment, without any fear.
He also tried to project the theory that Indian politics can also do without its two major national parties — the BJP and Congress. Rao changed his party’s name to BRS to give it a nationalist image; trashed Modi’s much discussed ‘Gujarat model’; and also spoke in Hindi to give the impression that he can don the role of a national player despite hailing from the south, a region which seems to be more sidelined in the country’s national politics due to a barrier called language. South India has produced many leaders of mass base but their inability to articulate in Hindi hurt their national ambitions. Rao had an advantage on this aspect.
Rao also tried to project himself as a leader who fought for the states against the federal government and as one who represented the backward castes, farmers and the poor — the so-called underprivileged class. He tried to show that the federal government in New Delhi cared little about the disadvantaged classes and that his own government was doing more for them through various welfare means.
Rao tried to stitch together a non-BJP, non-Congress front ahead of the general elections of 2019 but it did not succeed. He relaunched the project this year and was also already in talks with various regional leaders from the south, north and west. He spoke for his state’s industrial policy and showed that communal harmony prevailed in it that helped more investment to arrive. He also encouraged the youth to come together to show a unified India and oppose what he called the BJP’s divisive politics.
But with he now set to lose the only state where his party is active, KC Rao’s national ambitions to defeat Modi have received a major setback.
