Polling for the 2024 general elections to Lok Sabha will happen in Telangana on May 13, the Election Commission of India (ECI) announced on Saturday, March 16. Counting of votes will happen across the country for the Lok Sabha and various Assembly elections on June 4.
Telangana has a total of 17 seats in the Lok Sabha. In the previous 2019 general election, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS, formerly Telangana Rashtra Samithi or TRS) won 9 seats, BJP won four, and Congress won 3, while All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi retained the party’s sole seat from the Hyderabad Lok Sabha constituency.
This time, the BRS is contesting in an alliance with the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). As per their seat sharing agreement, BSP will contest from two seats, and BRS will field its candidates from the remaining 15. However, just before the poll schedule was announced, BSP state president RS Praveen Kumar announced that he was quitting the party. BRS has already announced the names of 11 candidates, including former MLA Atram Sakku from Adilabad, and sitting MP Nama Nageswara Rao from Khammam.
Following its defeat in the recent Assembly elections, the BRS is now witnessing a wave of defections. BRS’s Nagarkurnool (SC) MP Pothuganti Ramulu, Zaheerabad (SC) MP BB Patil, as well as former MPs Sitaram Naik and Godam Nagesh, and ex-MLAs Saidi Reddy and Jalgam Venkat Rao have switched over to the BJP in recent weeks. The Zaheerabad and Nagarkurnool MPs have both been given BJP tickets to re-contest from their sitting constituencies.
Meanwhile, BRS MP from Peddapalli, Venkatesh Netha Borlakunta, has shifted to the Congress party. So far, Congress has announced four candidates from Telangana — former MP Suresh Kumar Shetkar from Zahirabad (ST) constituency, Challa Vamshi Chand Reddy from Mahabubnagar, senior Congress leader K Jana Reddy's son Raghuveer Kunduru from Nalgonda and Balram Naik from Mahabubabad (ST).
BJP on the other hand has announced the names of nine candidates. Telangana BJP chief G Kishan Reddy, the sitting Secunderabad MP, will contest again from the constituency. Sitting MPs Bandi Sanjay Kumar and Arvind Dharmapuri will re-contest from Karimnagar and Nizamabad again. Eatala Rajender, who lost the 2023 Assembly polls, will contest from the Malkjgiri constituency, previously held by Telangana Chief Minister and Congress leader Revanth Reddy.
For the Hyderabad seat, BJP has decided to field K Madhavi Latha, the chairperson of Virinchi Hospitals, against AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi. The seat has been the AIMIM’s stronghold since 1989, and Owaisi has won the past four Lok Sabha elections from here. Madhavi Latha, who has become increasingly visible on YouTube channels in recent months, has made several communal remarks in many of her interviews. Recently, speaking at the pre-release event of the controversial film Razakar: The Silent Genocide of Hyderabad produced by a BJP leader and releasing just before the Lok Sabha polls, Madhavi Latha referred to Owaisi as a ‘Razakar’. She went on to claim that Hindus in his constituency were “unsafe” because of Owaisi. “Even today, some people urinate in temples. This is not a Muslim but an individual acting as per the orders of Razakar,” Madhavi said.
The Razakars were a paramilitary force under the Nizam rule who brutally attacked villagers and activists of the Telangana peasant struggle led by the Communist Party of India (CPI). However, the visuals of the Razakar film were criticised for seeming blatantly Islamophobic. The BJP has been accused of repeatedly invoking the complicated history of Telangana people’s armed struggle against landlords under the Nizam rule, and communalising it to attack their present-day political opponents, BRS and AIMIM.
Read: A movie on Razakars' violent history in BJP's arsenal for Telangana