Hyderabad: Telangana is witnessing a new wave of political activity as the BJP, buoyed by its recent victory in West Bengal, sharpened its focus on India’s newest state – Telangana.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s nearly six-hour visit to Hyderabad on Sunday set the tone, with the trip mixing warm personal gestures with unmistakable political signals.
Modi made stops at Andhra Pradesh chief minister’s residences N Chandrababu Naidu\ and Deputy Chief Minister Pawan Kalyan. At Naidu’s house, he spent about an hour with the family, given his busy schedule.
Beyond personal warmth, Telangana’s political landscape was understood to be a major topic of discussion between Modi, Naidu and his son Nara Lokesh, with the upcoming Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections a central concern.
Although firmly anchored within Andhra Pradesh politics through his TDP, Naidu commands a strong following among the Greater Hyderabad region, roughly a crore population with settlers from Andhra Pradesh and the city’s influential professional IT community in the majority.
Pawan Kalyan, too, enjoys considerable popularity among the youth of the region. The BJP is now said to be actively looking to capitalize on this goodwill as it looks to make inroads into the GHMC region, where it has historically struggled.
In the 2023 assembly elections, both the Congress and the BJP made a dent in the GHMC constituency, with the BRS sweeping all 20 seats in Hyderabad’s urban core. Out of the 39 segments of the state, BRS won the pink party which dominated the GHMC constituencies and the peripheral areas of Ranga Reddy and Medak districts.
The BJP managed to improve its position in north Telangana, winning seven assembly seats and finishing second in 19 others, but the party admits that capturing Hyderabad’s urban belt is essential for any serious bid for power. This ambition has been bolstered by its strong showing in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, where it claimed eight of Telangana’s 17 parliamentary seats.
Modi’s visit also created considerable buzz with his playful yet pointed response to Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy. At a public event where the Prime Minister inaugurated development projects in the state, Reddy speaking first invoked the “Gujarat Model”, noting that Modi had achieved developmental success as Prime Minister with the support of then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
He asked Modi to extend similar support to Telangana, which aims to become a $1 trillion economy by 2034 and a $3 trillion economy by 2047.
Modi’s response was characteristically sharp. He said he was willing to give Telangana exactly what the Center gave Gujarat during Manmohan Singh’s decade in power, but with a catch. “The moment I do that, what you are getting now can become half. You will not be able to get where you want to get to. So you better join me,” he said.
His suggestion that Reddy “tie up” was clearly termed as a “non-political point” sent the Congress and BJP circles in the state into a frenzy of speculation.
With the GHMC elections on the horizon, polls pending in at least two more corporations and the Congress continuing to assert dominance in the rural and urban local body races, the political race for Telangana is only going to intensify.
