MP Rabindranath
Telangana Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy seems to have discovered that running a government is a tad trickier than running a campaign. Just a year and a half after storming to power with grand promises and “guarantees,” the man now finds himself doing the political equivalent of backpedalling on a treadmill—blaming the previous BRS regime while failing to move forward himself.
Revanth’s recent admission that the state is drowning in debt, courtesy of KCR’s financial misadventures, may be an honest confession. But as the Opposition gleefully points out, honesty won’t pay pensions, reimburse student fees, or keep contractors from knocking on the Secretariat door with unpaid bills. If truth alone could build infrastructure, Telangana would already have bullet trains zipping past faltering welfare schemes.
Now, to be fair, the state’s finances under the BRS weren’t exactly a Swiss bank brochure—more like a Ponzi scheme in slow motion. But here’s the million-rupee question: if Revanth knew this mess existed, why did he promise the moon and a couple of stars in the Congress manifesto?
Ah yes, the fabled “six guarantees”—a political Ponzi plan reportedly concocted by a journalist-turned-strategist-turned-Pied Piper of the Congress. Flush with the high of bamboozling Karnataka voters, this self-anointed genius thought Telangana would be equally gullible. Revanth, desperate to prove his electoral worth to a party gasping for relevance outside WhatsApp forwards, happily bought the script.
And it worked—for a while. The Congress pulled off a surprise win, and Revanth was hailed as the knight who slayed the KCR dragon. But cut to June 2025, and our knight is saddled with a dragon-sized debt and a manifesto that reads more like fiction than fiscal policy.
While Revanth plays the greatest hits of “Blame KCR,” people are humming a different tune: “Where’s my pension?” “Where’s my scholarship?” and “Why hasn’t my building contractor been paid since Sankranti?”
What makes this richer is Revanth’s dual-role performance. In public, he plays the anguished reformer, cursed with an empty treasury and unrealistic expectations. In party meetings, he channels the Terminator, warning Congress leaders to “perform or perish” in the upcoming local body polls. It’s a bit like setting a house on fire and then scolding your tenants for not keeping the furniture polished.
And then there’s the curious math: Revanth claims the BRS left behind a ₹9,000 crore burden. Critics argue it’s more like ₹4,000 crore, with Revanth perhaps tossing in unpaid welfare dues for good measure to plump up the villain’s file. Either way, it’s a convenient narrative.
Meanwhile, the BRS, stung but not dead, is regrouping. Armed with grievances about police vendetta and politically motivated cases against the KCR family, they are sharpening their knives for the municipal battlefield. And don’t count out the BJP just yet—they may be the third wheel, but they’re already wooing voters with the classic pitch: “You’ve tried the other two disasters. Give us a shot.”
It’s a perfect storm for Revanth. On one side, he faces an electorate growing impatient with his government’s under-delivery. On the other hand, an emboldened Opposition is ready to feast on his unforced errors. And floating above it all is the Congress high command, ever-ready to parachute in blame but rarely solutions.
In the end, politics, like cricket, is not just about winning the toss. You’ve got to survive the innings too. Right now, Revanth Reddy looks like a batsman who promised a century but is running out of overs and running partners.
He may still scrape through—Telugu politics is as unpredictable as a Tollywood climax. But if local body polls go south, Revanth might discover that in Telangana, guarantees can turn into liabilities faster than you can say “manifesto” (The author is a political analyst and former Assistant Editor/Bureau Chief of Deccan Chronicle).
