The bypoll rout in Jubilee Hills has done what years of internal murmurs could not: force the BJP to confront its own strategic drift in Telangana. And the message has come not from an outsider but from one of its most combative personalities—suspended Goshamahal MLA Raja Singh—whose blunt assessment of the party’s performance has gone viral for a reason. It captures the deep frustration of a cadre that once believed the saffron party was on the cusp of emerging as the state’s principal challenger but now sees that momentum squandered by indecision, poor leadership choices, and muddled strategic thinking.
The BJP’s undoing began the day the national leadership abruptly replaced Bandi Sanjay Kumar with G. Kishan Reddy as the state unit president. Few in the party deny this. Bandi Sanjay, now Union Minister of State for Home, had built an unmistakable narrative—an insurgent BJP rising to dethrone the BRS. His aggressive campaigns, cultural messaging, and high-voltage yatras created excitement within the cadre and anxiety within the BRS. For the first time since statehood, Telangana looked like it might witness a genuinely bipolar contest between the BJP and KCR’s party.
But the leadership in Delhi blinked. The decision to replace Sanjay with Kishan Reddy—more conciliatory, less combative, and hardly a mass mobiliser—punctured the BJP’s surge. The cadre that had been electrified by Sanjay’s roadshows suddenly slipped into confusion. The leadership changed just when the euphoria was peaking.
Meanwhile, the Congress, written off as a political fossil, made the exact opposite move.
The central leadership of the Congress—often mocked for misreading political realities—took the risk the BJP should have taken. They brought in A. Revanth Reddy, then contemplating quitting the irrelevant TDP, handed him the reins of the Telangana unit despite protests from senior leaders. The gamble paid off spectacularly.
Revanth, aggressive and relentless, positioned the Congress not as a fading relic but as the only serious alternative to the BRS. Despite ideological inconsistencies—from ABVP activist to TDP firebrand to Congress chief—he delivered what the party desperately needed: fight. And the cadre, demoralised for a decade, rediscovered its purpose. His rise even forced old warhorses like Marri Shashidhar Reddy, son of Telangana stalwart Dr. Marri Chenna Reddy, to abandon the party in protest and join the BJP.
The results are now history. Congress won. BRS lost. BJP watched.
Against this backdrop, Raja Singh’s explosive interview is not just a personal outburst—it is a mirror held up to the party’s leadership. Singh, suspended earlier after the BJP high command tried balancing its stand with the then-ruling BRS, minced no words. Telangana BJP, he said, “cannot dream of coming to power” as long as it remains leaderless and strategy-less.
His anger is not misplaced. The Jubilee Hills bypoll proved humiliating. The BJP not only finished a distant third but recorded one of its lowest-ever vote shares in the constituency. For a seat that falls under the Lok Sabha constituency represented by none other than state president G. Kishan Reddy, the embarrassment is acute.
Raja Singh’s core allegation is simple: the BJP has no strategy. Whether the Congress used money, liquor or local networks is irrelevant, he argued—it had a plan. The BJP did not. And that, he said, is the leadership’s failure.
His grievance runs deeper. Even if the BJP were to invite him back, he said he would not return after being “humiliated” without cause. And then came the stinging question: How can a leader who cannot defend his own Lok Sabha segment ever lead a state campaign?
Political observers agree with Singh on one major point: Bandi Sanjay understood the emotional undercurrents shaping the state. Revanth Reddy aggressively cultivated Muslim voters with provocative messaging. Sanjay, in contrast, made no apology for appealing to Hindu sentiment. Whether one agrees with his rhetoric or not, his clarity galvanised a section of the electorate.
That clarity has now vanished from the party’s state strategy.
The BJP cannot afford to treat Telangana as a side project if it truly aims to expand in the South. With Congress resurgent under Revanth Reddy and BRS waiting to reclaim lost ground, the saffron party must decide whether it wants to fight or merely spectate.
If the BJP hopes to challenge Revanth or counter KCR-KTR, it needs a credible, aggressive, and mass-connecting state president—not a placeholder. The national leadership has little time left. Telangana politics is moving fast. And as Raja Singh’s viral warning makes clear, the cadre’s patience is running out.
If Delhi doesn’t course-correct now, the party’s dreams in Telangana may fade faster than its Jubilee Hills vote share.
