The BJP’s plan in Telangana

The campaign to the Hyderabad local body Member of Legislative Council (MLC) polls, which recently concluded, provided a glimpse into how the political landscape in Telangana may change in the next few years.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is trying to emerge as a strong contender. The national party fielded a candidate against the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) despite the odds being heavily stacked against it.

The BJP tested its Hindutva strategy that has been yielding it dividends across India. Senior leaders openly appealed to religious sentiments. The party urged GHMC corporators, MLAs, and MLCs belonging to the Hindu community to oppose the AIMIM, branding the latter as a “communal party”. It went to the extent of tying posters and banners at the residences of Congress and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) corporators, urging them to switch sides.

The Union Minister of Coal and Mines, G. Kishan Reddy, known as a moderate voice, surprised many people by adopting a sharp communal tone during the campaign. His speeches demonstrated the extent to which the party had shaped its campaign narrative. The Minister of State for Home Affairs, Bandi Sanjay Kumar, who was formerly the BJP’s Telangana chief and who is known for a fiery brand of politics, kept the communal pot boiling by targeting the AIMIM, and calling the political alliance of the AIMIM and Congress ‘unholy’. Malkajgiri MP Etala Rajender, who had earlier cut his teeth on Left politics and later the BRS, toed the BJP line more aggressively than ever before.

Political parties, including the ruling Congress, see this as a decisive shift in the BJP’s strategy not just for this election but for upcoming elections in Telangana, such as the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) elections slated for the end of the year. They believe that the BJP will not miss even the smallest opportunity to fan communal passions if this could help it galvanise the electorate.

Senior BJP leaders agreed that their goal is clear — to use the MLC elections as a staging ground to prepare the cadre and the public for the GHMC elections, and shape public psyche. They said that the aim is to consolidate Hindu votes across caste and class lines. The plan is to keep getting stronger by the time of the next Assembly polls in 2028.

In the previous GHMC elections, the BJP had adopted a harsher tone against the AIMIM. The then BJP State chief, Mr. Bandi Sanjay, launched a blistering attack against the AIMIM, saying the headquarters of the AIMIM would be demolished if the party dared touch former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao’s memorial ghat on the shores of the Tank Bund. This was in response to AIMIM legislator Akbaruddin Owaisi’s remark that the tombs of Rao and former Chief Minister N.T. Rama Rao on the Hussain Sagar lake banks should be razed first if the Telangana Rashtra Samithi government was considering removing encroachments into water bodies in the old city. The BJP reaped benefits from this strategy; several people, including those not well known, got elected.

Though the party has lost the 2025 MLC election as anticipated, it has succeeded in creating a buzz around its campaign style and signalling what its main narrative will be in the coming months. It has also managed to control the discourse.

The BJP bagged two of the three MLC constituencies — Teachers and Graduates from the North Telangana districts — which showed that the victory of eight MP seats in last year’s parliamentary elections was no flash in the pan.

The party believes that it now has a real opportunity to emerge as a formidable force in Telangana’s political landscape. That the BJP is a partner in the National Democratic Alliance government in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh could help it increase its footprint in Telangana too.

If rumours are to be believed, the next State president of the BJP will likely be a hawk rather than a soft-spoken politician. The party seems to be convinced that a combative, unapologetically hard-line face would be better suited to capitalise on the new political opportunity in Telangana, especially when the State’s political landscape is undergoing a churn with the weakening of the BRS.

In the Hyderabad local body MLC polls, the BJP may not have won, but it has planted a narrative and sent out a strong message to its opponents and its rank and file about the battles for which it is ready, armed with the ammunition of Hindutva.