After Mahbubnagar, the Bharatiya Janata Party is preparing to administer another shock to the TRS in the Parkal Assembly constituency in Warangal district. The BJP leadership has decided to contest the Parkal Assembly seat, which fell vacant after the resignation of Ms Konda Surekha, who shifted loyalties from the Congress to the YSR Congress.
The BJP fell out with the TRS after the latter refused to give up the Mahbubnagar Assembly seat in the recent bypolls. Taking exception to this, the BJP, which is part of the Telangana Joint Action Committee, fielded it’s candidate Srinivas Reddy who won the seat on the Telangana plank, sending shockwaves through the TRS.
Though TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao tried to downplay the Mahbubnagar episode, saying that it was ultimately the Telang-ana sentiment which won, it is now clear that TRS has lost its T-patent and the BJP is emerging as the new champion of Telangana.
“Why not? We will certainly field a candidate in Parkal. We are busy preparing for the byelections,” BJP state president G. Kishan Reddy told Deccan Chronicle when asked if the party would field a candidate from Parkal. Mr Kishan Reddy made it clear that henceforth the party would contest all the seats in Telangana region.
The Parkal contest is sure to further widen the BJP-TRS rift and create more problems for the TRS in the days to come. That the BJP and TRS are on uneasy, prickly terms was clear from the recent deeksha by the BJP leaders in Warangal against the suicides by youth for the Telangana cause. Pointedly, the TRS was not invited. “We did invite the TJAC,” Mr Kishan Reddy said.