The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), led by Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, is facing difficulties in expanding its footprint in Maharashtra as it is yet to get a leader of mass appeal to steer the party in the already crowded political space of the western State.
The party has held three impressive public meetings — the first rally in Nanded on February 5, another at Kandhar-Loha in Nanded on March 26, and the latest one in Aurangabad on April 24. It set out to appeal to the farming community with its slogan ‘Ab Ki Baar, Kisan Sarkar’, but could not make much of an impact as could be seen from the party’s performance in the elections to the posts of directors of the Agricultural Produce Market Committee in Nanded district. The Maha Vikas Aghadi bagged a lion’s share of seats in the elections with the Shinde-Fadnavis alliance emerging a distant second.
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Though some leaders, including former MLAs, former MPs and those who contested and lost elections, have joined the BRS in Maharashtra, there is not a single leader with a long-standing political record who has entered the party fold.
Mr. Rao has been looking for a farmers’ leader to be the face of his party here. However, several leaders he or his party has approached have turned down the offer. This has made it difficult for the party to find a suitable candidate for the post.
A few months ago, Mr. Rao met Devappa Anna Shetty alias Raju Shetty, a popular farmers’ rights activist, two-time MP and president of Swabhimani Paksha, the political wing of farmers’ outfit Swabhimani Shetkari Sanghatana, and asked him to be the party’s Chief Ministerial candidate in Maharashtra, but he declined the offer “humbly”.
The BRS supremo also tried to rope in Yuvraj Sambhajiraje Chhatrapati, scion of the Kolhapur royal family and descendant of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, for an alliance.
Now, according to sources, the BRS supremo is looking for a farmers’ leader from the dominant Maratha community to be the face of his party. On April 30, he gave full-page advertisements in all leading Marathi newspapers in Marathi about the opening ceremony of the newly-built Telangana Secretariat in an attempt to make the party presence felt in the western State.
“We are in talks with two or three powerful leaders from the Maratha community, and are positive about at least one leader joining the party in the presence of Mr. Rao,” said Manik Kadam, a farmers’ rights activist and now with the Bharat Rashtra Kisan Samithi, a farmers’ wing of the BRS.
Mr. Kadam, who hails from Parbhani in the drought-hit Marathwada region, aligned himself with Mr. Rao in August 2022 and since then he is working on expanding the party’s reach in the State and organising public meetings. He remained tight-lipped about the identities of the leaders who are in talks with the BRS. He said the party was working to promote three welfare schemes: Rythu Bandhu (agricultural investment support scheme), crop insurance and 24-hour electricity supply to farmers.
Recently, the party has decided to constitute party committees and contest in zilla parishad elections whenever they are held. The committees will be formed in every village from May 7 to June 7 and a huge farmers’ rally with 10 to 12 lakh people is being planned.
