HYDERABAD: Ending days of suspense, the BJP national leadership on Wednesday appointed Karimnagar MP Bandi Sanjay Kumar as party’s Telangana State president. The announcement of Sanjay Kumar’s appointment was made by party president JP Nadda in Delhi.
By replacing the incumbent Dr K Laxman with Sanjay Kumar, the party seems to have decided to have a leader who has a lot of fire in his belly to take the TRS head-on and also the AIMIM, which has been growing quietly across the State.
The party has also taken into consideration Bandi Sanjay Kumar’s caste - Munnuru Kapu - a backward class community, which is numerically powerful in north Telangana districts. Though Dr Laxman too belonged to the same caste, Sanjay Kumar beat him in the race, with his appeal among the youth, his strong moorings in RSS ideology and his commitment to the Hindutva cause.
Though Dr Laxman too had fought valiantly against the TRS, the party leadership appears to have decided to test, for a change, Sanjay Kumar’s ability to take on KCR in the next Assembly elections with his penchant for playing up emotive issues like the Hindutva and his panache in going to any extent to improve the prospects of the party.
Bandi Sanjay’s appointment to the top BJP post in the State also signals the end of the vice-like grip of the Hyderabad-based leaders on the party and proves that leaders from other districts too can make the cut.
Till the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, hardly anyone outside the BJP knew about him. He was a corporator in Karimnagar Municipal Corporation. Though he tested his luck in the 2014 and 2018 Assembly elections by contesting for Karimnagar seat, he could not succeed. But when the Lok Saha elections arrived, dame fortune smiled on him as he brought down TRS heavyweight B Vinod Kumar with a margin of over 89,500 votes.
The party, which was an underdog after the 2018 Assembly elections, saw its fortunes soar by the time of the Parliament elections. From a score of one Assembly seat of the total 119 seats in the Assembly elections, it rose to winning four Lok Sabha seats — Adilabad, Karimnagar, Nizamabad and Secunderabad.
This sudden spike in the party’s fortunes has made the leaders dare to dream that they could make a dash for power in the State as Telangana soil, they believe, is always conducive for the party to sink in its roots deep, owing to historical reasons. As the Muslim population in Telangana is about 12 per cent, it is easy for the party to make smart gains by consolidating Hindus.
Born on July 11, 1971, in Karimnagar, Sanjay Kumar grew in RSS ecosystem. He had been fed RSS ideology since he was 12 years old. A silent worker that Sanjay is, no one noticed his quiet rise in the ABVP and BJYM and he subsequently becoming an MP. Now, he would be leading the BJP forces against the TRS in the next Assembly elections.