HYDERABAD: The election narrative is suddenly swinging around reservations for SC, ST and OBC communities with chief minister A Revanth Reddy turning the issue on its head.
Even before the CM started taking a strident line and accusing the BJP of making moves to scrap the reservations back in year 2000, the Telangana BJP think-tank actively deliberated upon fielding strong Dalit faces in reserved Lok Sabha seats even if they had strong left-liberal ideas.
Association of Billion Minds (ABM), led by Union home minister Amit Shah and Telangana affairs in-charge Sunil Bansal, searched in various sectors for strong Dalit faces among the intellectuals before the nominees for SC reserved seats were declared. ABN is a BJP group that does polling and campaigns for Shah.
The right-wing party was inspired to embrace this strategy, particularly following former minister Eatala Rajender’s victory in the by-election, who was previously known to have strong left-leaning views and felt the party should engage a left-leaning think-tank.
According to high-level sources, the saffron party spoke to three intellectuals with left-wing backgrounds before finalising the candidature of Gomasa Srinivas (Peddapalli) and A Ramesh (Warangal). Among the three candidates, two worked in govt-nominated posts in education and culture departments during BRS regime and the other one is a known singer. What’s more intriguing is that the party leadership even told them that they need not adopt the party’s strong Hindutva stance.
“A key leader from the Telangana BJP unit, who served as a party president, approached them with this offer and provided them with examples of two ex-ministers from Tamil Nadu who did not play the Hindutva card like other leaders but were still integrated into the former govt,” a source said.
The BJP leadership, at one point, even thought of fielding MRPS leader Manda Krishna Madiga from Peddapalli or Warangal but dropped the idea.
Congress, on the other hand, paid full attention to picking Dalit candidates in reserved candidates and chose Mala leaders. The Congress is now trying to attack the BJP saying that it has a hidden agenda to scrap the reservations altogether and BJP, in turn, accusing the Congress of giving Muslim reservations snaching the quota from SCs, STs and OBCs. The BJP is also promising SC categorisation and picked Madiga candidates in the reserved seats.
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