BRS chief’s power play in Maharashtra makes MVA jittery

As the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) troika looked on with apprehension at Telangana Chief Minister and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) president K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s temple pageantry in Maharashtra, the BRS chief on June 27 questioned why the State’s political parties felt so threatened by his party.

As the Opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) troika looked on with apprehension at Telangana Chief Minister and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) president K. Chandrasekhar Rao’s temple pageantry in Maharashtra, the BRS chief on June 27 questioned why the State’s political parties felt so threatened by his party.

As Mr. Rao visited the historic Vitthal-Rukmini and Tulja Bhavani temples in Pandharpur and Dharashiv respectively, the top brass of the MVA, which included the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the Congress and the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena (UBT), decried the BRS as the ‘B-team’ of the ruling BJP which was out to cannibalise their traditional vote bank.

Later, addressing a public meeting at Sarkoli near Pandharpur in Solapur district, Mr. Rao said: “Tell me one party in Maharashtra that has not been given a chance… the Congress ruled the State for a full 50 years. Then, the people have given a chance to the NCP, the Shiv Sena and the BJP. If they really wanted to work for the betterment of the people, any one of them could have done so.”

Dismissing the MVA’s accusations of the BRS being the BJP’s handmaiden in Maharashtra, the Telangana Chief Minister further said: “One thing I cannot understand is that we have been here [in Maharashtra] barely three or four months… Why are these parties so angry with us. Why is there so much fear, so much anger for such a small party like the BRS. No party has missed an opportunity to target us. The Congress calls us BJP’s ‘B team’, the BJP calls us the Congress’ ‘A team’… We are not anybody’s team. We are the team of farmers, women, Dalits, minorities, backward classes.”

Reiterating his party’s slogan of ab ki bar kisan sarkar, Mr. Rao said the BRS was the only party in the country which had the courage to openly claim that next time there would be a farmers’ government.

The BRS president said all political parties had been betraying the farming community since Independence and it was time for transformation by joining hands of farmers and farm workers, who comprise about 60% of the electorate.

“All these parties are now scared that farmers are attaching themselves to the BRS…the BRS is not just limited to Telangana or Maharashtra, but want to bring about a qualitative change in the country. Farmers could dictate the fortunes of parties if they stay united,” said the Telangana Chief Minister.