(By Ashok Tankasala)
It was not too many days ago that the BJP in Telangana was virtually on a pinnacle. It won four out of seventeen Lok Sabha seats delivering a shock to the seemingly invincible ruling TRS party and pushing the main opposition Congress to the third position.
Then comes the time for itself to undergo a shock. Failing to win a single Zilla Parishad out of the 32, it is like falling into an abyss for them. TRS is poised to bag all of them, a rare feat even at the all India level.
The BJP never won more than one Lok Sabha seat in Telangana region on its own. Its strength in the state legislature was always limited to single digit numbers.
Its voter and social bases also have been quite weak, particularly outside the capital city of Hyderabad, reflecting this situation.
Even that modest performance depended on allying with other parties. The position had been so for several decades during the days of Jan Sangh and also BJP.
The party earnestly hoped to turn a new leaf with the formation of separate Telangana state in 2014 since it strongly favored the division of united Andhra Pradesh.
But, for a variety of reasons their legislative strengths remained where they were. Whereas the local leadership never took the trouble to build the party, their being in power at the Centre also did not help at all.
When in this backdrop the BJP badly lost in the Assembly elections in last December, even dropping its seat count from five to a mere one, it surprised none, including the party ranks.
Then suddenly the roof came down with Lok Sabha results. While TRS was expecting to sweep all the 16 seats it contested, the BJP astonished everybody by winning four.
That elated them so much that the leaders from Hyderabad to New Delhi went on making big claims saying the era of TRS was definitely coming to an end, the Congress had already been pushed to the third position, the next hustings in 2023 were sure to see them coming to
power.
The party leadership was so overtaken by what may be described as emotions that it did not appear to be making any level headed reviews of the ground level realities. What factors really helped them to win at four places as if out of the blue.
Is it really possible for a party which won just one Assembly seat, losing four of the sitting members only five months ago and lost deposits in as many as 103 seats? This inquiry of common sense never came to their mind, obviously in that mood of unfounded over-enthusiasm.
Within a few weeks now come the results of MPTC and ZPTC elections, overturning the BJP world. Out of a total of 5,816 MPTC seats, their score is a paltry 206, whereas for ZPTCs it is 8 (eight) of 538.
In the four Lok Sabha seats where they won the party fared very poorly not even opening an account in several districts. Interestingly the party contested at more number of places compared to last time and ended up with a lesser number of seats. Thus with the make-believe world coming down with a big thud, the party has suddenly gone into a “moun vrat“.
If that provides them with some opportunity to ponder over the issues of “illusion and reality” only time can tell. In any case the
the cardinal lesson they need to learn is that without building bases through hard work, it can only yield a ‘golden harvest’ of four Lok Sabha seats today and a killing drought of no Zilla Parishads tomorrow.