BJP does not pose a challenge to the BRS in Telangana as there are only two parties – the BRS and the Congress – on the ground. This was claimed by Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, the Congress Legislative Party leader who has been on a padayatra for the past three-and-a-half months across the state, covering 1200 km.

Alleging that Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has brought back the feudal rule, Bhatti said the BRS and BJP are hand in gloves. If this was not the case, why the Centre not acted against Rao, popularly known as KCR, despite massive corruption, asked the Congress leader.

Currently, on the very last leg of his 1,600 km-long march which began on 16 March as a part of the “Haath se haath jodo yatra” from Pipri village in Adilabad in North Telangana and will end at Khammam in the South with a huge public rally on 2 July, Bhatti said, “BJP is not at all a challenge in Telangana. On the ground, I can see only the BRS and the Congress. The BJP and the BRS are the same. The prime minister and Union home minister keep saying that ‘this (BRS) government is very corrupt. Kaleshwaram is like their ATM’ but they have not taken any action despite having all the information.”

Following the party’s victory in Karnataka, the Telangana Congress got a new lease of life and its leaders have been putting up a united front. Bhatti, who had been against the new entrants in the party, claimed with the high command’s intervention the infighting has become a thing of past, dwarfed by bigger concerns, that of the people.

He also said with the entrance of YS Sharmila, Congress will not be adversely affected as it had in 2018 when it formed alliance with N Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP. A wily KCR had promptly declared that Telangana will now be controlled by Andhra people if the Congress was voted to power leading to a washout for the national party. Instead Sharmila will draw votes from erstwhile supporters of the late YS Rajasekhar Reddy.

He is certain that with high anti-incumbency against BRS and banking on people-friendly poll promises like subsidized LPG the Congress will be back in power in the state after a decade.

“Telangana has always been against feudal rule, even before Independence. But after the bifurcation of the state, KCR restored the feudal rule. I have been telling in my meetings that Congress is the only people’s party in Telangana. The best governance that Telangana enjoyed was before the bifurcation of the state. With statehood we got Telangana geographically and physically but not water, employment and the self-respect. This man (KCR) has cheated people,” said Bhatti pointing out how the flagship project Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Scheme (KLIS) merely consists of three barrages but no distribution canals and hence no new ayacut was added.

Neither vacant posts have not been filled nor were new ones created by the BRS government leading to massive unemployment, he added.