HYDERABAD: For a party that has spent the past few months trying to bring its Telangana unit on to one page, the latest exercise at the national level has opened another question within its ranks: Where does the state stand in the BJP’s larger scheme of things?
The question has less to do with who was appointed and more with who was not. When BJP national president Nitin Nabin announced his new team, naming 13 national vice-presidents, eight general secretaries and heads of various morchas, there was no place for a Telangana leader. For several aspirants in the state, the announcement was a disappointment. For others, it was difficult to reconcile with the political ground the party believes it has gained in Telangana.
The timing has added to the unease. The Telangana BJP has spent recent weeks working through differences among its leaders, with the central leadership pushing MPs, MLAs and other senior leaders to function more closely. Meetings involving Union ministers, MPs and state leaders were aimed at putting past disagreements aside and presenting a more coordinated organisation ahead of the elections.
Pending appointments
That exercise had begun to produce some visible results. Bandi Sanjay held a series of informal meetings with Telangana MPs in New Delhi, while discussions between him and Malkajgiri MP Eatala Rajender helped move along some pending organisational appointments.
A meeting between Sanjay and Nizamabad MP Dharmapuri Arvind was also seen within the party as part of the effort to draw a line under earlier differences. The leadership has since sought to project greater coordination between MPs and the eight BJP MLAs, particularly in pursuing development projects with the Union government.
Against that backdrop, the absence of a new Telangana face in the national team has naturally prompted questions.
The BJP’s electoral graph in the state is one reason. Its vote share rose from 6.8% in the 2018 Assembly elections to 15% in 2023. It remained third behind the BRS and Congress, which secured 37.37% and 39.38% respectively, but the party’s eight Lok Sabha seats in the 2024 general elections gave its Telangana unit a stronger position in the national calculations.
The mood within the party had also changed after its performance in West Bengal. Prime Minister Narendra Modi subsequently visited Telangana and spoke of the state as the BJP’s next political target.
His meetings in Hyderabad with Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and Deputy Chief Minister
Pawan Kalyan added to the sense that the city and the two Telugu states were becoming part of a wider political conversation.
It is against this backdrop that the latest national appointments have caught attention. If Telangana is being spoken of as a state the BJP wants to win, party leaders and aspirants naturally expected that political importance to find some reflection in the national organisation. State BJP president N Ramachander Rao, however, sought to play down the disappointment.
“The state, with eight MPs, has been well represented with G Kishan Reddy and Bandi Sanjay in the Union ministry. Leaders from the state are likely to get in-charge responsibilities of other states. The state has also been represented by DK Aruna as national vice-president and Dr K Laxman as national OBC Morcha president,” he said.
That is also the line the state leadership is likely to take as it moves ahead: Representation, it can argue, cannot be measured only by the names on one national list. With these leaders playing a national level role, Telangana does have a presence in the BJP’s wider organisational and political structure.
Key electoral frontier
Yet, inside a party where appointments often carry their own message, the disappointment among aspirants is unlikely to disappear immediately. The expectation had been built not merely on individual ambitions but on the BJP’s own assessment of Telangana as an important electoral frontier.
For now, the state unit has another balancing act on its hands. The central leadership has been trying to ensure that competing power centres do not weaken the organisation, while state leaders are expected to convert the recent show of unity into electoral machinery. The national reshuffle has added a new layer to that process.
In politics, as party veterans often point out, much can be settled around a meeting table before it reaches the campaign trail. The Telangana BJP may have closed one chapter of internal differences, but the question of how New Delhi intends to use the state’s growing electoral footprint is likely to remain part of the conversation. After all, when expectations rise, even an empty chair can become a talking point.
