Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Amit Shah is likely to visit Telangana on December 24 to review the poor performance of his party’s state unit in the Legislative Assembly elections held on December 7. The BJP, which had five MLAs in the previous term of the House, was routed out by the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and left with a single seat in the state.
Amit Shah will also check the party’s preparedness for the upcoming 2019 Lok Sabha polls in Telangana. Presently, the BJP holds the Secunderabad MP seat, represented by Bandaru Dattatreya.
This was announced by state BJP President Dr Laxman, who claimed that TRS President and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao banked on a ‘Telangana sentiment’ which helped him sail through smoothly.
“Amit Shah will hold talks with party pramukhs and karyakartas at the booth level. A cluster of three parliamentary constituencies will be reviewed,” Laxman told reporters.
Earlier this week, Amit Shah congratulated KCR for his party's victory in the state. "Congratulations to Shri K. Chandrasekar Rao ji and TRS for the impressive victory in Telangana assembly elections," he said in a tweet.
Communal hate-monger T Raja Singh, representing Goshamahal constituency, was the only MLA from the BJP who survived the KCR wave in the state and won with a majority of 17,734 votes in the Assembly elections.
In July, Singh had called for “shooting down” Rohingya Muslims as they were “foreigners.” Besides making several such hateful messages, particularly targeting the Muslim community, during the Una incident the Hindutva hardliner termed beef-eating Dalits as “filthy people”.
Sitting BJP MLAs including State party president K Laxman, Kishan Reddy, Chintala Ramachandra Reddy and NVSS Prabhakar lost from their respective constituencies.
Buoyed by the massive victory, KCR has said that he would play a crucial role in national politics and work to evolve an alternative to both BJP and Congress with a new model.
IANS inputs