FALLING OVER BACKWARDS

THE SAFFRON PARTY IS RELYING HEAVILY ON THE OBC VOTE AS A POTENTIAL GAME-CHANGER

- Amarnath K. Menon

Becoming a dependable alternative demands some complex political manoeuvring. The Bharatiya Janata Party. (BJP) may have perfected it into a fine art elsewhere, but not when it comes to challenging two-term chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) and his Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) in Telangana. Rather than calling the shots, the BJP finds itself caught in a three-way contest, with a resurgent Congress vying for power too in the coming assembly polls on November 30. The party, therefore, is going all-out in a vigorous poll campaign. "If the BJP is voted to power, the chief minister will not be confined to a farmhouse but will be among the people," says state BJP chief G. Kishan Reddy, promising free education and health cover for the poor.

To reap quick political dividends, the party is positioning itself as a champion of the OBCs (Other Backward Classes) and is pledging to appoint a CM from their midst. The strategy could well work as the OBCs make up 52 per cent of Telangana's population, and they have not had a CM from their cohort so far. The saffron party has nominated 37 candidates from the OBC community, pending an alliance with actor-turned-politician Pawan Kalyan's Jana Sena Party (JSP), which may eventually surpass the number other political parties have fielded. In addition, out of the 37 tickets that have been allocated to forward castes, 27 have gone to candidates from the Reddy community, 16 to Scheduled Castes and 10 to Scheduled Tribes. Among the 100 candidates announced so far, there are 14 women.