HYDERABAD: Events of the past week are building up tension in some parties and excitement in others, but together, they have roiled the political firmament.
The week saw state BJP president Bandi Sanjay Kumar launch the third phase of his Praja Sangrama Yatra, and it has been so fortuitous for the party, everything is seemingly going its way ever since.
Barely had Sanjay started his yatra that things began to happen. Komatireddy Rajgopal Reddy announced his resignation from the Congress and as MLA from Munugode.
Now, with Sanjay’s yatra entering Munugode constituency, the epicentre of attention and the next big battlefield for winning Telangana’s heart for the war next year, the party is highly energised.
It was on August 2 that Sanjay began the current round of his padayatra from Yadadri. Back in Hyderabad the same day, Rajgopal Reddy announced the potentially game-changing political decision, for himself, as well as for the BJP.
Six days later, on Monday, the day Sanjay’s padayatra entered Munugode constituency with a fresh spring in the step, Rajgopal Reddy submitted his resignation as MLA to Assembly Speaker Pocharam Srinivas Reddy, who promptly accepted it and the Legislature’s Secretariat notified his resignation within minutes.
If the word going around within the BJP is any indication, Rajgopal Reddy’s exit from the Congress and entry into the BJP were not something that happened out of the blue but something that had been brewing.
The timing of Rajgopal Reddy’s moves was also not just a matter of fate and, the BJP leaders say, point to Sanjay’s leadership and ability to keep the political pot boiling. The idea is to keep the TRS on its toes and have the ruling party jump through one hoop after the other, the party leaders say.
For the BJP leaders and cadres, an impending byelection in Munugode where they get to once again take on the TRS has come as yet another opportunity to showcase their might, after having proved themselves in Huzurabad and Dubbak.
These two bypolls were clear challenges to the TRS, the party leaders say, and became highly useful in building support for the party and pushes the narrative further that while the TRS was losing ground, the BJP was the only viable alternative.
Party leaders say that another aspect that truly started as a coincidence is the predominance of BJP MLAs with their names starting with the letter R. It started with T. Raja Singh, the lone BJP member in the Assembly, who was joined by G. Raghunandan Rao from Dubbak, and then Etala Rajendar from Huzurabad, with the BJP playing on the RRR movie title and spirit.
And now, with Rajgopal Reddy, Sanjay’s plan is to have four ‘R’s in the Assembly and do one better than S.S. Rajamouli, the director who made the film RRR.
Coincidence or not, for the BJP, the events over the past one week that included someone like Dr Sravan Dasoju from the Congress join the BJP in a near lightning move, with Sanjay being seen as much of the brains behind the drain from the Congress, and leading the attack from the front, is just what the party needs even as the Praja Sangrama Yatra began to wind its way through the Munugode constituency on Monday.
The party is still anticipating how many more wins Sanjay will score as his yatra moves forward.
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