BRS’ Silver Jubilee rally today with plans to regroup after political setbacks

BRS MLC K. Kavitha flagging off a 25-Ambassador car convoy to Elkathurthi near Warangal from her residence in Hyderabad on Saturday.
| Photo Credit: By Arrangement

HYDERABAD

Sunday is a big day for Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), that came into being as Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) on April 27 in 2001 with the sole objective to fight for statehood to Telangana. As an organisation, the party finds itself at the crossroads with its journey filled with many ups and downs entering the Silver Jubilee year.

After leading the statehood movement successfully for 14 years, the party rode to power in 2014 and the wave of success continued for another term before the rural voters hit the party very hard in November 2023 elections, shattering the leadership’s dream for a third successive term – what would have been a first for a regional party in the South.

The party’s political graph plummeted to new lows when it drew blank in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as its candidates forfeited security deposit in a majority of the 17 seats – the worst ever performance for the party in its journey so far. Since then, the party has been trying to regroup itself by targeting the ruling Congress party, mostly highlighting the inability of the ruling party to keep its pre-poll promises.

As part of the party’s Silver Jubilee celebrations, the BRS leadership has chosen Elkathurthi near Warangal, one of the two places (the other being Karimnagar) when the party had its most successful political rallies so far, for the day-long event to be concluded with a public meeting to be addressed by party founder and former Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao.

Led by a few teams of party leaders, the party ranks have been making the arrangements for the Silver Jubilee event for the last couple of weeks. According to the party leaders, the event is being organised on a 1,213 acres land with 154 acres spared for the public meeting and the rest for other needs including parking of vehicles. The dais would accommodate 500 party leaders.

To extend first-aid and emergency medical needs, the party has planned 12 medical camps at the venue and six ambulances. All basic amenities such as temporary toilets, food, drinking water, butter milk arrangements are being made with volunteers drawn for managing parking and other facilities.