HYDERABAD: Union Home Minister Amit Shah will kick off BJP’s grandiose plan to spread its wings far and wide in Telangana when he visits Hyderabad on Saturday for the first time after the recent general elections. It will begin when he will admit a tribal family into the BJP in Mamidipalle in Pahadisheriff in Old City. After his programme in Old City, the BJP president will confer with at least 20 senior BJP leaders where he will discuss strategies to energise the party and make it get cracking.
According to sources, the BJP chief’s arrival is very significant since it wants to make Telangana as its gateway to South. The party has been on overdrive ever since its landslide victory in Lok Sabha elections and is looking for leaders from other parties like a predator.
The saffron party, after winning Munugodu MLA Komatireddy Rajagopal Reddy over, is gunning for more leaders from the TDP which is in a moribund state in Telangana and also from the Congress which lies emaciated after continuous poaching by the TRS. The party, now rapacious to land big fish, has set its eye on TRS also but it may not be able to cut much ice since it is very strong at present with more than 100 members in the Assembly, out of a total 119.
BJP leaders, particularly Ram Madhav and P Muralidhar Rao are eyeing some leaders in the TRS though they know it will take time even for the disgruntled leaders to come out openly. For them to cross the Rubicon and join the BJP, the party first should look strong and appear capable of capturing power in the state in the next Assembly polls.
The BJP has succeeded in landing three TDP and two Congress leaders recently. They were I Peddireddy, C Suresh Reddy and B Janardhan (all TDP), Sasisdhar Reddy and Shaik Rehmthulla (both Congress). Even before the Lok Sabha polls, senior Congress leader DK Aruna switched sides to saffron party while former MP A Jitender Reddy did a prodigal son and returned to BJP from TRS after KCR denied him the Mahabubnagar ticket.
Both Union Minister G Kishan Reddy and BJP State chief K Laxman have said on more than one occasion that, going froward, the BJP would stand out as an irresistible attraction to leaders from other parties. “We have no problem in accommodating anyone from any party as long as they have faith in BJP’s ideology and resolve to strengthen the hands of Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” a senior BJP leader had said recently.
The party is confident of spreading across Telangana fast because of the State’s unique history, particularly that of Hyderabad, hinting that it would use Hindutva card to the maximum extent possible to get the Hindus polarised on its side. For this to happen, the BJP is getting ready to target AIMIM and TRS which are poll allies.
With Hindutva slogan paying rich dividends in the recent Lok Sabha elections in helping the party pocket Karimnagar and Nizamabad where the Muslim population is quite substantial, the party wants to test the weapon in other parts of Telangana.