TELANGANA CONG NEEDS UNITY BEFORE 2024 POLLS

THE Congress victory in Telangana is nothing short of a tectonic shift in state politics. Some may point at the difference of just two percentage points in the vote shares of Bharat Rashtra Samithi and the Grand Old Party to claim that the latter's resurrection is not decisive. But politics is not all about precise arithmetic, though such metrics are useful in deconstructing the results. The Congress won decisively in the districts, sweeping aside the BRS even in its strongholds. But the Congress could not win even a single seat in Hyderabad and its surroundings, indicating a clear rural-urban divide.

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The BRS under K Chandrasekhar Rao turned a blind eye to discontent outside the state capital. Much like his one-time colleague in TDP, N Chandrababu Naidu, KCR took the rural population, particularly the poor and farmers, for granted. With his son and former IT minister K T Rama Rao endearing himself to Hyderabadis, perhaps the BRS chief thought all was well-he ignored his legislators' arrogance and nepotism, and his government's gross failure in digitising land records, besides being oblivious to the adverse public opinion on his own conduct.