With national leaders like Amit Shah and JP Nadda visiting the state in quick succession, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is giving out a clear message that Telangana is important for them.
After Karnataka, the saffron party seeks to continue its southern conquest with Telangana, and all its dreams are riding on state party chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar’s shoulders. The 51-year-old MP from Karimnagar just concluded his 25-day Praja Sangrama Yatra 3 at Hanmakonda.
Known for his aggressive style and unapologetic delivery of the BJP’s Hindutva agenda, he was made the Telangana state chief at a time when the BJP saw an unexpected rise in vote share in 2019.
Talking to News18, political analyst Gali Nagaraja said: “Sanjay became the Telangana BJP chief after the 2019 elections. In that election, the BJP sprang a big surprise by getting four parliament seats and 20% vote share. It was a dramatic rise as in the state election in 2018, they had just one seat and a little over 7% vote share.”
With such a turn of events, the BJP started looking for a new face. There was a general perception that the leaders were helming the BJP at that time — Dr K Laxman and Kishan Reddy before him — were close to the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi.
Sanjay, meanwhile, was a young leader who came from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) background. “Sanjay, who was under 50, was relatively young and a core RSS member. He rose from his position of a municipal councillor. With his RSS background, he could aggressively push the Hindutva agenda and spread the BJP’s message through some gruelling padayatras. The party leadership is hopeful of flourishing with divisive politics in Telangana,” added the analyst.
This story was originally published in news18.com . Read the full story here
