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Months after raising a banner of revolt against the party leadership, K Kavitha, the estranged daughter of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) founder and former Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao, has announced that she would soon launch a political party and contest the next assembly elections.

 

“I am coming out soon with an alternative political platform. Telangana needs a party that genuinely works for the state,” she said.

Currently, Kavitha, who was suspended from the party last year, heads a cultural organisation called ‘Telangana Jagruthi’. She plans to convert this outfit into a full-fledged political party.

 

She appealed to all the like-minded forces, including Left sympathisers, students, unemployed youth and women to support her mission and stand by her in the new endeavour.

 

Earlier, she broke down during an emotional speech in the Telangana Legislative Council, recounting her role in the Telangana statehood movement over two decades ago, her political journey, and the circumstances that led to her suspension and eventual resignation from the BRS headed by her father.

 

Choked with emotion and with tears flowing down her cheeks, Kavitha said she had submitted her resignation from the MLC post on September 3 last year, a day after her suspension from the BRS. She requested the Council Chairman G Sukhender Reddy to accept her resignation immediately.

 

Later, Kavitha went to the Telangana martyrs’ memorial at Gun Park in front of the state legislature complex and paid floral tributes to those who laid down their lives for separate statehood.

 

Family Drama

The power struggle in the first family of the BRS came to a boil when Kavitha, a former MP who was arrested and jailed briefly in 2024 for her alleged role in the Delhi liquor scam, started attacking her cousins — former Minister T Harish Rao and former Rajya Sabha MP Santosh — for indulging in corruption and damaging the party’s image.

 

It soon turned into a no-holds-barred sibling battle when she started targeting her brother and the party working president KT Rama Rao for various omissions and commissions during the party’s nine-and-half year rule from 2014 to 2023.

 

By anointing his son as the party working president in 2018, KCR had left no one in doubt about his succession plan but Kavitha has made known her political ambitions to play a bigger role in the party.

 

The sibling rivalry has deepened further when she made it clear that she would not accept KTR as her leader.

 

“BRS lacks ethics and constitutional spirit, and has become corrupt,” she said. She criticised party leadership for acting without constitutional spirit — targeting her unfairly, and creating a disciplinary committee overnight to suspend her without notice or explanation.

 

Kavitha said she had been in public life for nearly two decades and entered the Telangana movement in 2006, inspired by her father KCR and Telangana ideologue late K Jayashankar. “Though my father served as a Union minister, I began my journey independently through the Telangana Jagruti platform and organised several programmes to mobilise women and youth in support of Telangana movement,” she said.

 

Kavitha also claimed that she had played a key role in bringing pressure on the then UPA government in granting statehood to Telangana. “After the formation of Telangana state, I never aspired for any posts, but the BRS leadership asked me to contest the Lok Sabha elections from Nizamabad,” she said.

 

However, she alleged that restrictions on her activities began soon after the formation of Telangana in 2014, even as she continued organising Bathukamma celebrations under the Jagruti banner. Right from day one, her freedom of expression was curtailed within the party, she alleged.

 

She lamented that she was sidelined and eventually expelled through a “vindictive conspiracy”, without ever being part of key state-level decisions.

 

Massive Corruption

She alleged that there had been massive corruption in major projects such as the construction of new Secretariat complex, Ambedkar statue, Amara Jyoti and collectorate constructions. “Repeated representations regarding corruption by certain public representatives, illegal sand mining and atrocities on Dalits went unaddressed. I tried to bring them to the notice of KCR, but there was no response,” she said.

 

She said she had also opposed renaming Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) as BRS and criticised the party’s national ambitions. “What can a party which could do little for Telangana in 10 years, would do to the nation?” she asked.

 

Kavitha alleged that she was jailed (in the Delhi liquor scam) due to political vendetta and was left to fight cases by herself for three years against central agencies, without party support. She criticised her suspension from BRS, alleging that it was carried out overnight without notice or seeking her explanation.

 

She described the party constitution as a “joke,” as it was hardly an eight-page document. While stating that she could legally challenge the suspension, she said she chose not to, asserting that she was happy to distance herself from what she described as a party lacking moral credibility.

 

Kavitha said that although her path may now be different, her goal remained the same — the welfare of the people of Telangana. 

 

Also read: Kavitha to float new party, targets Telangana CM post in 2028