Editorial: Is Revanth ready?

CHENNAI: Even as Anumula Revanth Reddy was being sworn in as the new chief minister of Telangana, workers were busy dismantling the barricades outside Pragathi Bhavan, which will be his official residence. The elaborate steel structure was erected by his predecessor K Chandrashekar Rao to keep the people out of his opulent residence and became something of a metaphor for the old incumbent’s imperious aloofness, besides being a nuisance to rush-hour traffic. The new man has announced that the name of Pragathi Bhavan will be changed to Dr BR Ambedkar Bhavan. It is the sort of easy things new CMs do in the giddiness of victory. But beyond such symbolic dismantling of the old order, there lie obstacles that take more than a wrecking crew to whittle down. Considering the circumstances surrounding the Congress’s election victory in Telangana, challenges are likely to come rushing at Reddy.

It is important for him to remember that the victory was wafer-thin. Barely 200 percentage points separated the vote shares of the Congress and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi. While the final return of 64 seats to the winner and 39 to the loser make it look comfortable for the Congress, the ruling party is only four MLA seats above the majority mark. That’s the sort of margin players like Amit Shah and Chandrashekar Rao himself have toyed with in the past. With the BJP eager to enlarge its footprint at the cost of the Congress in Telangana, the situation must seem inviting to the BJP to launch an Operation Lotus soon enough, if only to prove to the people that the Congress can no longer assure them stable governance.

Then there is the challenge for Reddy of having to lead a ministry that has several of his peers and seniors in it, each fancying himself as a CM and ever alive to opportunities to show him up. Many in the party see him as an interloper with a history of ties to the Sangh Parivar student wing, and as a liability for his role in bribing a legislator at the behest of the TDP boss Chandrababu Naidu back in 2015. Although feted as the architect of Congress victory in Telangana now, Revanth Reddy could well become a vulnerability if the BRS and BJP, or even his own rivals in the Congress, decide to exploit that chink in his armour.

The first test of political acumen for the new CM is barely six months away. When the nation goes to the general election in mid-2024, Revanth Reddy will be expected to deliver Telangana for the Congress. Given the parlous state of the party in north India, it is essential for the survival of the Congress that the South, especially Karnataka and Telangana, prop it up in the next election. As things stand, the party’s prospects in every other state of the nation are poor. If Karnataka and Telangana do not stand by the Congress now, the party’s future would be bleak indeed. But recent precedents are not promising. In state after state in the past 10 years, we have seen voters voting differently in the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, preferring the BJP for the latter. Why, Karnataka itself threw up a hung Assembly in 2018 but gave 26 out of its 28 MP seats to the BJP just a year later. Should a similar thing happen in Telangana, the euphoria in the Congress party will vanish in a trice, and possibly forever.