The Election Commission of India (ECI) sent a letter to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief and Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao renaming the TRS as Bharat Rashtra Samiti (BRS) on Wednesday.
The Chief Minister will sign the letter officially on December 9 at 1 p.m. starting the process for changing the TRS into BRS. He called for a meeting of all the MPs, MLAs, MLCs and other leaders at the Telangana Bhavan to discuss the issue and lay the roadmap for the transformation.
On November 8, the TRS issued a public notice of its intention to change the party’s name to BRS as per the provisions of the Election Commission of India (ECI). The notice said that those who have any objections to the proposed name change can write to the ECI within 30 days of the publication of the notice. Since 30 days have passed the ECI has sent a letter to the TRS chief conforming the name change apparently after it has not received any objections.
The Chief Minister announced his intention to go national by changing the name of TRS to BRS, on October 5. However, the discussion to go national was on for a few months with Mr. KCR taking on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with whom he had smooth sailing for almost 8 years since the formation of Telangana in 2014. However, with the BJP getting into an aggressive mode with its mission to capture Telangana and the subsequent wins in Dubbak and Huzurabad bypolls the relationship evolved into a confrontation mode.
The constant attack of the local BJP leadership on KCR and his family for ‘corrupt and family rule’ further deteriorated the relations leading to KCR’s decision to go national to attack the BJP and highlight Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “failures” on various fronts.
