Telangana chief minister and Bharat Rashtra Samithi president K Chandrashekar Rao is planning a series of public outreach programmes in the neighbouring Maharashtra state in the next few weeks, people familiar with the matter said.
According to a senior BRS functionary, KCR wants to strengthen the organisational network by intensifying the membership drive and take the party deep into the rural areas of Maharashtra, ahead of the Lok Sabha elections in 2024.
The BRS president is of the view that the party should be prepared to face the situation if the Centre led by National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government goes in for simultaneous elections to Lok Sabha and a few other state assemblies early next year, the BRS functionary said, requesting anonymity.
BRS working president and Telangana information technology minister KT Rama Rao on Tuesday said that the assembly elections in Telangana, which are scheduled to be held in December this year along with four other states – Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram, might get delayed by a couple of months and held along with a few other assemblies like Odisha and Andhra Pradesh, along with that of Lok Sabha sometime in February or March.
“We are prepared for any such eventuality of facing simultaneous elections. While we are confident of returning to power in Telangana for the third successive term, we are also looking at winning a good number of MP seats in Maharashtra. Hence, the preparedness,” BRS spokesperson Dasoju Sravan said.
KCR is planning to step up the activity after the completion of the special session of Parliament by September 23 and depending the development in Parliament, he would shift the focus on Maharashtra. “We may get clarity about the simultaneous polls after the parliament session,” Sravan said.
According another BRS leader familiar with the development, KCR is planning to hold a series of 30 public meetings in Maharashtra, covering majority of the districts before the announcement of election schedule.
“Simultaneously, the BRS will intensify the membership drive, appoint party committees in every district and expand the organisational network across the state to face the Lok Sabha elections,” the party leader said, also requesting anonymity.
According to him, the BRS has already established its network at the grassroots level in 15 districts, covering 27 of the total 48 Lok Sabha constituencies in Maharashtra, with an enrolment of nearly 1.5 million members.
Several senior leaders, including some former lawmakers and legislators, besides hundreds of sarpanches and zilla parishad members have already joined the BRS in Maharashtra.
KCR already addressed as many as six rallies in Maharashtra, so far the last one being at Sangli on August 1. His first rally was on February 5 at Bhokar of Nanded, second meeting at Kandhar-Loha on March 26, the third meeting at Aurangabad on April 24, the fourth rally on May 19 at Nanded town again and sixth rally at Solapur on June 27.
