A new president and some hope

A. Revanth Reddy has a lot of work to do in making the Congress relevant in Telangana

The fear of being consumed by the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is slowly gathering steam in Telangana, has pushed the Congress to focus on strengthening its cadre base and become relevant once again.

The formation of Telangana was a very emotive issue. The Congress thought it would gain from the birth of the new State. But since 2014, the party has only been diminishing in strength. Its poor performance has largely been due to infighting between senior leaders who projected themselves as chief ministerial candidates. Also, the defection of MLAs to the ruling party after the 2014 and 2018 elections badly damaged the Congress’s organisational strength.

Now, hope has emerged for the many loyal party workers in the form of the new president, A. Revanth Reddy, a sitting Congress MP from Malkajgiri. After the 2018 polls, the party steadily lost its support base of Dalits and Muslims. In an effort to win them back, Mr. Reddy organised the ‘Dalita-Girijana Dandora’ to “expose” Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s unkept electoral promises made to Dalits and girijans. Meetings were held deep inside the Adilabad forests and in the heart of the Gajwel constituency represented by Mr. Rao. They were successful and sent a signal to the cadres that the party cared about its support base and was willing to take on the powerful.