BJP bets big on new 'proxy' hiring lead Kiran Kumar Reddy after Etala Rajender flop show in Telangana

HYDERABAD: Has the ‘HR head’ of Telangana BJP Etela Rajender lost his sheen as he could not successfully fulfil the mandate of organising the crossovers, especially from his political alma mater -- the Bharat Rashtra Samithi. In fact, when Rajender was eased out of the BRS, the BJP pinned high hopes on him that a large number of leaders would switch gears from KCR’s bandwagon and jump into it. But nothing such has happened. Yet, Rajender remains the boss of ‘joinings committee’, whatever that means.

With the trust levels tottering in his ability to encourage political turncoats, the BJP has kept its proverbial fingers crossed for a long time. Then flashed an idea in the crazy minds of some party managers that it could launch a proxy war through another ‘imported’ leader.

Without losing time, they enticed a jobless former Chief Minister Nallari Kiran Kumar Reddy, who actually was the last Chief Minister of an undivided Andhra Pradesh, into the BJP.

As it is Kiran Kumar Reddy was relegated into wilderness by history, politics and geography –

i) history, because he only has a past and no credit to claim in the present;

ii) politics, because the political party he had launched that never won even a respectable vote share forced him to take the route of ‘homecoming of a prodigal son’ eventually to close ranks with the Congress and get back;

iii) geography, because he had to remain a mute spectator to the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh.

In fact, the BJP has nothing to boast about in Telangana and had to elevate an archetypal nowhere man from the position of a nondescript corporator in Karimnagar municipal corporation, who eventually went on to become an MP from Karimnagar, to the Telangana State unit president to take on the mighty KCR.

Sanjay could only do so much that he could indulge in rabble-rousing to a limited extent and his much-touted padayatra too ended up just as an interlude between events on a larger canvas. Rajender’s failure to get anywhere closer to the mandate suffocated the BJP top-brass a lot. The hype and hoopla went awry.

Thus came in Kiran Kumar Reddy, but in the role of a proxy. For, he belongs to Andhra Pradesh by virtue of his political career and also lineage. However, Kiran Reddy’s claim to fame in Telangana – as he purportedly believes – is that he was born and brought up in Hyderabad and thus he is a true-blue Hyderabadi. Ironically, neither by manner nor by demeanour, he has any semblance of a Hyderabadi.

Now, the BJP is thinking that he will be the cryogenic engine to drive the growth of the party in Telangana from behind the scenes. His proclivity to make the beneficiaries during his rule rally behind the BJP is the plank on which the party wants to harp on. Now, Kiran Reddy, being primarily a member of the BJP’s Andhra Pradesh unit, is said to be working overtime to attract those ‘spent forces’ in the Congress towards the BJP in Telangana.

Some of those who feel ostracised within the Congress or those who reached a cul de sac in the grand old party may join the ranks of the BJP. This could surely be a political excursion for them. Nonetheless, Kiran Reddy, who never lost touch with some of his loyalists like former MLC Magham Ranga Reddy in Telangana is preparing a list of the potential targets for “acquisition”. Original BJP leaders are apprehensive that Kiran Kumar Reddy would create a ‘geriatric club’ within the BJP with ‘foreign bodies’ – disgruntled Congress leaders.

Kiran’s biggest challenge is that he has never been a people’s man. He doesn’t command a vote bank of his own. Precisely for this reason, he did not contest the 2014 elections, even though he floated a political party of his own that contested on the symbol of a pair of chappals.

Kiran’s much-derided prophecy that Telangana would be plunged into darkness if separated from Andhra Pradesh by showing a map with a wooden pointer remained etched in the minds of the people of the State. And, KCR never loses an opportunity to rub salt on this proverbial wound of Kiran Kumar Reddy. Because, Telangana was developed by KCR into a power-surplus State. By any parameter, neither the Congress nor the TDP can even claim that they did better than KCR, for the incumbent outshone all his predecessors in terms of performance and delivery.

What’s irksome, especially to Etela Rajender when it comes to remain a ‘figurehead’ of an activity which Kiran Kumar Reddy is mandated to handle as a “ghost” is that the former was chided and rebuked by the latter on the floor of the Assembly in the undivided State suggesting that he would not give anything to Telangana and Rajender could do whatever he wanted to.

Rajender is in fact caught in a bind whether to accept the puppeteering by Kiran Kumar Reddy. His own disillusionment and an eventual resignation to the chairmanship of the ‘joinings committee’ was apparently junked by the BJP leadership.

With all these experiments with truth, the BJP in Telangana is indeed groping in political badlands.