GHMC elections hold key to BJP’s TS power dream

As the BJP plots to occupy the main Opposition space against the TRS, winning more seats in the GHMC polls early next year will be an important step ahead of the 2023 Assembly elections.

The GHMC’s 150 wards constitute 25 of the Assembly’s 117 seats.

The BJP has not lost hope in this regard despite the disaster in the 2018 Assembly elections when it lost four of the five Assembly seats it had won in 2014.

The BJP has just four corporators in the current GHMC. But it won the Secunderabad Lok Sabha seat in 2019.

BJP cadres feel that increasing their number in the GHMC polls will not be an easy task. The biggest challenge before will be to regain the hold over Hyderabad. It will have to do a lot of groundwork towards preparing its cadres for the polls.

In the GHMC 2016, the TRS won 99 seats, followed by the MIM (44), BJP (four), Congress (two) and TD (one). BJP workers are of the opinion that if the party fails in putting up a good show, it cannot fulfil its dream of coming in power in 2023.

BJP leaders hope to benefit from the weakening Congress and the Telugu Desam. They point out that a number of disillusioned grassroot-level leaders of the Congress and TD in the GHMC area are looking to the BJP.

Soon after the Assembly and Lok Sabha polls, the BJP leadership in the state had encouraged leaders of other parties to join it. Subsequently, however, the BJP stopped welcoming leaders from other parties in view of opposition from its own cadres at the city and state level.

A senior BJP leader pointed out that the party has active and committed workers at the division level in the municipal corporation. State BJP chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar has already made up his mind to tap these workers for building a movement towards capturing the GHMC.

The new state unit president also plans to revamp the city unit by inducting young leaders as officebearers to face both the TRS and its ally MIM in the corporation polls, the senior BJP leader told Deccan Chronicle.