What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
Well, try telling that to politicians smarting under the electoral debacle and looking for reasons for their defeat. For them, the very name of their party could be the culprit.
A section of leaders in Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), which lost power in Telangana in the recent elections, argue that the party’s rechristened name failed to resonate with the voters. It should be reverted to its original name, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), to regain its identity and glory, they demand.
“Telangana is our core identity. People equate us with the statehood movement and credit us for realising the statehood dream. We need to get back to the original name, that is TRS,” a senior party leader and former minister Kadiyam Srihari said.
The party had changed its name to BRS in October 2022, to reflect its supremo K Chandrashekar Rao’s foray into national ambitions. Two months later, the Election Commission of India approved the name change, paving the way for KCR, as the former Chief Minister is popularly known, to expand the party’s footprint beyond Telangana.
However, the recent defeat in the Telangana assembly elections has poured cold water on his national ambitions. Many senior leaders now feel that the party, which was primarily identified with the Telangana cause, lost its connection with the people of the state once it started projecting itself as a national party.
“It was one of the key reasons why we lost the elections. We could not invoke the Telangana sentiment as we had done in the past,” another senior leader Srinivas Yadav contended.
In the past few weeks, the demand for reverting the party to its original avatar has been gaining momentum. The matter has also been coming up during meetings being conducted by BRS working president and KCR’s son K T Rama Rao and former minister T Harish Rao, to introspect on the party’s performance in the assembly elections and gear up the cadre for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls.
“The party leadership has been apprised of the sentiments of the leaders,” Harish Rao said.
The TRS, founded in 2001 to fight for the statehood cause, spearheaded the agitation, culminating in the bifurcation of the combined Andhra Pradesh to carve out a separate Telangana state in 2014.
“So far, the Election Commission has not registered any other party in the name of TRS. So, if we submit a fresh representation to the ECI for a change of name of the party back to TRS, it can do it within a few weeks,” Srihari said.
Some political observers called the name change a historic blunder as it eroded the core identity of the regional party.
Another major lacuna in the family-driven party is the lack of proper organisational structure. Unlike other parties, the BRS doesn’t have any units from the village level to the state level. There are no presidents, vice presidents, general secretaries, organising secretaries or even spokespersons.
“It was KCR and his family members who have been running the party as a family enterprise. This has to change and in the coming days, it has to grow into a more democratic outfit,” senior analyst S Ramakrishna said.
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