With Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath holding a road-show and later on Saturday addressing a public meeting and Union Home Minister Amit Shah to visit the Telangana capital on Sunday, it is clear how seriously the Bharatiya Janata Party is taking the election for 150-ward Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation on December 1.
It was only on Friday that the party’s national president J P Nadda too delivered his speech there. This was preceded by trips by Union ministers Smriti Irani, Prakash Javedkar, young MP from Karnataka, Tejashwi Surya, sports personalities and party leaders Gautam Gambhir and Saina Nehwal etc.
The saffron party has certainly put the ruling Telangana Rashtriya Samiti on defensive. TRS leader and state chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao too addressed a big public meeting on Saturday evening. TRS has 99 corporators, while All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen 44. The BJP has only four members.
But this time it is in mood to capture the GHMC and is fully exploiting the situation emerging after the heavy downpour and flooding in metropolis a couple of months back. Greater Hyderabad has population of over one crore. It sends five MPs and has in all 24 Assembly constituencies.
Though it is the TRS which is the main player in the GHMC the BJP is concentrating all its energy against the AIMIM, which is contesting only on 51 seats. The latter has just seven MLAs. They support the TRS government. All the BJP leaders are targeting the AIMIM because it helps polarize the votes in its favour.
Amit Shah will start his Hyderabad journey with a prayer in Bhagya Lakshmi Temple near Charminar. The BJP is accusing the state government of doing nothing for the flood affected people of Hyderabad and charged that water is still to come out of several localities.
On the other hand the TRS government is accusing the Centre of not giving a penny to the state after the flood when it was quick to allot immediate assistance to the BJP-ruled Karnataka and Gujarat when the intensity of the disaster was much less. It also said state government had allotted Rs 550 crore on its own.
Political observers are of the view that the BJP is doing all these ground work for the next Assembly election due in 2024 as the Congress has completely been decimated in the state.
