When Congress general secretary K.C. Venugopal arrived in Hyderabad for a meeting with party leaders a fortnight ago to outline a campaign strategy against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he would hardly have expected the kind of vitriolic attacks that the two parties have engaged in over the issue of reservation which has now caught the country’s attention.
The powerful political narrative pushed by Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy in his election campaign has seemingly left the BJP rattled, so much so that even Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah have had to take up cudgels on behalf of the party.
Even RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had to step in and clarify that the RSS was not against reservation.
A large part of the Telangana election campaign is now centred on the reservation issue, which has spread like wildfire across the country. That Mr. Modi had to stoutly denounce the Congress party’s allegations, stating: “Reservations will not be abolished as long as I am alive” indicates how serious the BJP is about putting this controversy to rest.
Buoyed by the fact that it has become a talking point in the country, and based on reports from intelligence sleuths about the positive response being garnered by Mr. Revanth Reddy through his continuous attacks on the issue, the Congress party plans to build on this issue and take the ongoing debate over it to a crescendo in the few days left for the election campaign to close.
The theme that the Congress has adopted for next week as well is that the Modi-led BJP government, if re-elected for a third term, will abolish SC, ST and OBC reservations. Interestingly, the Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) has refrained from entering into this feud, and is focussed more on the Congress promises and personally targeting Revanth Reddy, apart from highlighting Mr. Modi’s ‘unkept’ promises to Telangana.
A positive outcome of the Congress narrative is that it has successfully relegated to the backseat the BJP’s allegations that the Congress would “redistribute people’s wealth among the minorities”, according to Congress strategists. “Reservations and the Constitution is the talking point everywhere, that’s our feedback,” a party strategist claimed.
The response from the State BJP regarding the allegations comes in a furious tone and all its leaders are trying hard to overcome it. BJP State president G. Kishan Reddy asked whether a person sitting in the Chief Minister’s chair can “speak such lies”.
Even after the Prime Minister’s clarification, Mr. Revanth Reddy is harping on the same issue only to create confusion, is what the BJP believes. “Is it possible to do away with reservations in India now? Society will burn. Why will the BJP do it?” Mr. Reddy retorted while speaking to journalists.
The BJP is trying to counter it with an aggressive approach to abolishing Muslim reservations and redistributing the quota among the SC, ST and BCs. But this has been the BJP’s stand for long and there is nothing new to generate interest among the voters.
The Congress also successfully shifted the focus to a large extent from the implementation of its promises in Telangana which the BRS and BJP were questioning.
