The BJP wants to make Telangana its second anchor in south India. Leaders expect the pink state to turn saffron in 2023
Has the Modi wave changed the colour and character of north Telangana? It seems so. Three of the four Lok Sabha seats the BJP won—Karimnagar, Adilabad and Nizamabad—fall in north Telangana and were once hotbeds of Maoist activity. Top Maoist leaders, including Kishenji and Ganapathy, hail from villages around Karimnagar town. The town is also home to intellectuals sympathetic to the cause. However, notably, the top issue during the recent elections here was the Hindu-Muslim divide. Many youth rallied behind BJP candidate Bandi Sanjay Kumar after social media posts of an attack on him— allegedly by All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen supporters—went viral. On March 29, Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao had said in a public meeting that he was more Hindu than Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This was taken out of context and was converted into a campaign tool. “He has become very close to [AIMIM president Asaduddin] Owaisi,” said a voter in Karimnagar. “This is the reason he was taught a lesson. As it was a matter of self-respect for Hindus, we voted for Modi.” Rao’s closest aide Vinod Kumar Boianapalli, former deputy leader of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi in the Lok Sabha, lost Karimnagar by a margin of almost 90,000 votes.
Last December, in the assembly elections, the BJP’s vote share was 7.1 per cent. In the Lok Sabha elections, it was 19.45 per cent. Even the party was surprised with the performance.
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