A Congress narrative that challenges BJP’s hard Hindutva stand in Telangana

Hyderabad political narrative focuses on reservation issue, with Congress and BJP engaging in heated debate ahead of elections.

When Congress general secretary K.C. Venugopal arrived in Hyderabad for a meeting with party leaders a fortnight ago to outline a campaign strategy against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he would hardly have expected the kind of vitriolic attacks that the two parties have engaged in over the issue of reservation which has now caught the country’s attention.

The powerful political narrative pushed by Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy in his election campaign has seemingly left the BJP rattled, so much so that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah have had to take up cudgels on behalf of the party.

Even RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had to step in and clarify that the RSS was not against reservation.

A large part of the Telangana election campaign is now centred on the reservation issue, which has spread like wildfire across the country. That Mr. Modi had to stoutly denounce the Congress party’s allegations, stating: “Reservations will not be abolished as long as I am alive” indicates how serious the BJP is about putting this controversy to rest.

Buoyed by the fact that it has become a talking point in the country, and based on reports from intelligence sleuths about the positive response being garnered by Mr. Revanth Reddy through his continuous attacks on the issue, the Congress party plans to build on this issue and take the ongoing debate over it to a crescendo in the few days left for the election campaign to close.

The theme that the Congress has adopted for next week as well is that the Modi-led BJP government, if re-elected for a third term, will abolish SC, ST and OBC reservations. Interestingly, the Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) has refrained from entering into this feud, and is focussed more on the Congress promises and personally targeting Revanth Reddy, apart from highlighting Mr. Modi’s ‘unkept’ promises to Telangana.

A positive outcome of the Congress narrative is that it has successfully relegated to the backseat the BJP’s allegations that the Congress would “redistribute people’s wealth among the minorities”, according to Congress strategists. “Reservations and the Constitution is the talking point everywhere, that’s our feedback,” a party strategist claimed.