IN JUNE, REVANTH REDDY laid out a virtual trap for Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao. At a public meeting in Hyderabad that bigwigs of the state Congress attended, he thundered: “I am throwing you a challenge, Chandrashekar Rao. You have 104 MLAs, and if you are a real man, give tickets to all sitting MLAs. If you have confidence in your leadership, do it.”
Revanth’s challenge was less a political rant and more a strategic move. For the next few months, the state Congress president’s challenge kept popping up from the party’s camp.
In August, three months before the assembly elections, KCR took the bait. In a show of overconfidence, he announced that he was giving tickets to almost all the sitting MLAs. The result—the BRS was reduced to 39 in the 119-member assembly.
A section of party leaders is still baffled about why KCR undertook this suicide mission; they knew that half of the MLAs were facing severe anti-incumbency.
Revanth’s challenge probably had its roots in the findings of Indian Political Action Committee, Prashant Kishor's consultancy firm. Last year,
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