HYDERABAD: Fresh from a strong showing in the panchayat elections, Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy is now turning his attention to the urban battleground. The next stop: municipal elections.
The chief minister is set to tour municipal towns shortly to fire up the party machinery and prepare Congress cadres for the urban test. His campaign is expected to kick off from Jadcherla in Mahbubnagar district on February 3, marking the start of an aggressive push.
Ahead of the tour, Revanth held a strategy meeting with MLAs from Mahbubnagar and Rangareddy districts. He asked them to take the fight to the grassroots and expose what he called the “failure” of the Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) in safeguarding Telangana’s Krishna river water rights when it was in power.
The message was clear. Corner the BRS on the ground, strip away the veneer, lay the party’s alleged double standards.
Congress MLAs believe the municipal election notification could be issued after January 20. Following the chief minister’s directions, they have already begun groundwork in municipalities under their respective Assembly constituencies.
Sources said Revanth plans to make the Krishna river water issue the fulcrum of his campaign, beginning from his home district of Mahbubnagar, which lies along the Krishna basin. He is keen to take on former chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR), accusing him of speaking in two tongues.
According to Congress leaders, Revanth intends to focus on how KCR allegedly neglected Mahbubnagar even while projecting himself as a champion of Telangana’s river water rights. He is also keen to reach the people before KCR launches his own campaign in Mahbubnagar, Rangareddy and Nalgonda districts.
The BRS, meanwhile, is preparing a counter-offensive. Party leaders argue that the Congress had colluded with the Andhra Pradesh government, allowing it to draw more water from the Krishna river to the detriment of Telangana. They plan to take this charge directly to the public.
To pre-empt KCR, Revanth is keen on reaching out to people well before the BRS hits the campaign trail. His goal is to expose what he termed KCR’s “double standards” on Krishna river issues.
The chief minister also alleged that the Palamuru and Rangareddy irrigation projects suffered grave injustice during the decade-long BRS rule. He plans to make these issues central to his outreach.
After Jadcherla, he is likely to tour Nalgonda and Rangareddy districts. These visits will focus on municipal elections and on explaining what the Congress calls the failures of the BRS government over the past 10 years.
Sources said that after the Assembly session, the ruling Congress will prepare a list of aspirants for municipal posts. The shortlist is expected to be cleared by the state Congress leadership and forwarded to District Congress Committees, which will announce candidates and issue B-Forms.
Riding the momentum of the sarpanch elections, Congress urban leaders and MLAs are gearing up for door-to-door campaigns. The aim is simple: win a majority of wards and bring municipalities into the Congress fold.
The party leadership is also likely to assign municipal election responsibilities to in-charge ministers, tasking them with converting momentum into mandate. The battle for urban Telangana is beginning.