HYDERABAD: After months of mixed signals from the Telangana BJP, the party’s central leadership seems to have stepped in to ensure that too many power centres do not end up hurting the organisation. The message from New Delhi is said to be simple: Stop looking over each other’s shoulders and start looking towards the next election.
Over the past few weeks, BJP national president Nitin Nabin, Telangana in-charge Sunil Bansal and co-in-charge Abhay Patil have quietly gone about meeting almost every important player in the state unit — Union ministers, MPs, MLAs, MLCs and senior organisational leaders. Party insiders say the objective was not merely to take stock of the situation but to iron out differences that had become increasingly visible in recent months.
One of the key initiatives, sources said, came from MoS for Home Affairs Bandi Sanjay Kumar, who hosted a series of one-to-one dinner meetings with Telangana MPs at his official residence in New Delhi over nearly a week. During the informal interactions, he is learnt to have impressed upon the MPs the need to work in tandem with MLAs, MLCs and the state leadership rather than function in separate camps.
Party leaders point to the recent appointments of district presidents as one of the first visible outcomes of the exercise. According to them, the appointments in Karimnagar and Medchal-Malkajgiri, pending for several months, gathered momentum after meetings between Malkajgiri MP Eatala Rajender and Bandi Sanjay in Delhi and Hyderabad. Those discussions, sources claimed, also helped smoothen differences that had emerged between sections of the state leadership.
Reconciliation exercise
Sources further maintained that another notable development was the meeting between Sanjay and Nizamabad MP Dharmapuri Arvind in New Delhi. The two leaders are said to have decided to put the past behind them and work together with the rest of the state leadership as the party prepares for a string of electoral battles.
The reconciliation exercise has not been confined to Delhi. Union Minister G Kishan Reddy, Sanjay and the party’s MPs have also been holding review meetings with the BJP’s eight MLAs on pending Central projects in their constituencies. They have jointly met several Union ministers to pursue development proposals, a move that leaders believe has reassured the cadre that the leadership is now speaking in one voice.
Political observers within the party say the optics are as important as the meetings themselves. For months, speculation over differences between MPs and MLAs had become a talking point within the organisation. The central leadership appears keen to ensure that such perceptions do not overshadow the party’s preparations for the elections ahead.
A senior leader said the high command had closely monitored developments in Telangana before asking Bansal and Abhay Patil to engage with the state leadership. “The message was clear — resolve issues internally and move forward as one team,” the leader said.
With the GHMC polls, elections to the municipal corporations of Malkajgiri, Cyberabad, Khammam and Warangal,
and the MLC graduates’ constituencypolls on the horizon, the BJP leadership believes organisational cohesion will matter as much as campaign strategy.
There is also talk within the party that MPs could soon be assigned responsibility for specific municipal corporations to oversee campaign planning and organisational work. Whether the newfound bonhomie lasts until polling day remains to be seen, but for now, the Telangana BJP appears determined to put the recent past behind it. After all, party veterans often say that elections are won as much in the meeting room as on the campaign trail.