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Two months after the Election Commission of India (ECI) allowed Kavitha Kalvakuntla to use the name Telangana Rakshana Sena (TRS) for her newly launched party, it has reportedly asked her to choose a different name and submit three alternatives for registration.
The ECI forwarded two objections to Kavitha — one from a registered Telangana-based party called Telangana Rajya Samiti, and another from a party in Maharashtra named Telangana Rashtra Samajika Sena — according to The Hindu.
The poll panel has also reportedly received over a 1,000 objections to the proposed name, many of them workers of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), formerly known as the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS). They argued that Kavitha’s party name was too similar to the BRS’s former identity and could cause confusion.
The ECI has reportedly given Kavitha 15 days to submit three alternative names before her party can be registered.
Kavitha, daughter of BRS chief and former Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, was suspended from her family-run party in 2025 following a rift with her brother KT Rama Rao and cousins T Harish Rao and Joginapally Santosh Kumar.
She went on to launch her own political party in April, initially announcing the name Telangana Rashtra Sena, reviving the acronym TRS used by the BRS before it was renamed in 2022 as part of its national expansion plans.
However, on April 28, three days after the launch, the ECI informed Kavitha that it was permitting the name Telangana Rakshana Sena to be published in newspaper notices, while making it clear that the final approval would depend on objections received during the public notice period.
The BRS, which was renamed from Telangana Rashtra Samithi to Bharat Rashtra Samithi in 2022, suffered major defeats in both the 2023 Telangana Assembly election and the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Since then, a section of party leaders has reportedly argued that it should revert to its original name to reconnect with its Telangana-centric identity.
