In Telangana, BJP cashes in on BRS’s dry run in LS polls

One man’s loss is another’s gain, the phrase holds true for the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), which drew a blank in the Lok Sabha polls and has seemingly ceded its political space to the BJP.

Tuesday’s results presented a grim picture for the BRS, which for the first time has no representation in the Lok Sabha since its inception in 2001, as its vote share dropped from 41.7% in 2019 to 16.7%.

The K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR)-led party, which won nine of the state’s 17 Lok Sabha seats in the last polls, saw eight of its candidates forfeit their deposits. On the other hand, the BJP, which doubled its tally from four to eight seats, saw its vote share rise from 19.6% to 35%.

In the Assembly elections last year, though the BRS’s tally drastically dropped from 104 to 39, its vote share was just 2% lesser than the Congress, which won 64 seats and formed the government with a vote share of 39.4%. Most of the BRS’s seat came from the Greater Hyderabad region.

However in the Lok Sabha polls, Secunderabad, Malkjgiri and Chevella – all three in Greater Hyderabad – went to the BJP, while it also also added Mahabubnagar, Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy’s home constituency, and Medak to its kitty and retained Adilabad, Nizamabad and Karimnagar.

Adding to the BRS’s troubles is its “friend”, Hyderabad MP and AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi, who since the change of guard in Telangana, is seen as moving closer to the Congress in departure of his earlier stance of referring to Revanth as “RSS Anna”.

A day before Telangana went to the polls on May 13, Owaisi had urged his supporters to back Congress candidates in Secunderabad, Chevella, Malkajgiri, Karimnagar, Nizamabad, Adilabad and Mahabubnagar to keep the BJP at bay. On Tuesday, he alleged that BRS