Kalvakuntla Kavitha, daughter of Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) founder and former Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao, has announced that she will launch a new political party in May, marking a dramatic escalation in the ongoing family and political rift within the BRS.
Kavitha said the party’s name would prominently feature “Telangana”, underscoring her commitment to reclaiming the state’s “self-respect and aspirations”.
Expelled from the BRS for alleged anti-party activities, she declared that she would contest the next Assembly elections from either Siddipet or Bodhan.
While a final decision will follow consultations, she made it clear that Siddipet remains her first preference. The constituency has long been a stronghold of senior BRS leader and former minister T. Harish Rao, her cousin and now political adversary.
Since her expulsion, Kavitha has repeatedly targeted Harish Rao, accusing him of several “omissions and commissions” during the previous BRS regime. She alleged that leaders like him created a rift between KCR and several party functionaries, including herself, and that the concentration of power alienated grassroots workers, weakening the party’s organisational base.
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She asserted that her new party would emerge as a formidable alternative and eventually come to power in Telangana. Predicting that the BJP would “disappear little by little” from the state’s political landscape, she said voters were seeking a regional force rooted in local aspirations rather than national parties.
According to her, several BRS leaders and grassroots workers are in touch and keen to join her new outfit. “There is a silent churn within the party,” she said, hinting at possible defections once the party is formally launched.
Kavitha currently heads the cultural organisation Telangana Jagruthi, which she plans to convert into a full-fledged political party.
The internal power struggle intensified after Kavitha, a former MP who was briefly jailed in 2024 in connection with the Delhi liquor case, began publicly criticising her cousins Harish Rao and former Rajya Sabha MP Santosh, accusing them of corruption and damaging the party’s image. The discord deepened when she targeted her brother, party working president K. T. Rama Rao, and declared she would not accept him as her leader.
“BRS lacks ethics and constitutional spirit, and has become corrupt,” she said, alleging she was expelled through a “vindictive conspiracy” without due process.
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