Opinion: From ‘heir’ to outcast, Kalvakuntla Kavitha causes implosion in BRS

HYDERABAD: After waiting for over three months ever since his dearest daughter turned impudent, Kalvakuntla Chandrashekar Rao, the unchallenged supremo of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), has axed the party MLC Kalvakuntla Kavitha from the party.

The decision is intended at sending across a message among the rank and file of the party that no belligerence is tolerated within.

The beleaguered party, which suffered w humiliating defeat at the hands of its arch rival, the Congress, was terribly embarrassed by Kavitha’s acts of commission more than acts of omission.

She emerged on the Telangana’s political arena as the stormy petrel now what with her latest diatribe against her cousins - former minister T Harish Rao and former Rajya Sabha member Joginpally Santhosh Rao - holding them responsible for the corruption smudge on the party patriarch and former Chief Minister of Telangana KCR.

She was brazen and vituperative in her attack on the duo. However, she spared her brother and working president of the BRS K T Rama Rao aka KTR, for obvious reasons.

However, she did launch fireworks in an oblique attribution to KTR by referring to the social media of the BRS that trolled her (KTR runs the party’s social media) big time.

She is now declared a persona non-grata by the party and now is seen as an anathema by insiders.

When she had said a couple of months ago, soon after her “letter bomb” to her father had been leaked to the media, that KCR was surrounded by demons, all fingers were pointed at the troika of KTR, Harish Rao and Santhosh.

However, since she had preferred to keep the charge hazy by choosing to restrain from pinpointing anyone, the explosion did not yield the “result desired” by the former MP.

*Meticulous sidelining of Kavitha*

Kavitha’s sidelining from the top echelons of the party has been systematic and meticulous. However, the leadership had ensured that it’s not made too obvious.

Ever since she had lost the Lok Sabha election from Nizamabad Parliament constituency for a second time in a row in 2024, things began turning opaque for her in respect of major decisions of the party. She felt the heat of being ignored and her lineage did not come in as an advantage.

The first jolt from the party came from within many years ago when KCR was at his peak during the first 10-year stint at the helm of Telangana as its maiden chief minister, first with a slender margin and a renewed term with a huge majority.

Kavitha, who took the plunge in 2006, joining hands and matching her step with her father, who was spearheading the separate Telangana agitation, floated her own frontal organisation, Telangana Jagruthi, loosely affiliated to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), a name that was later changed to BRS.

The Telangana Jagruthi had a perfect organisational structure and spread its tentacles all over the State and began its “service” activities.

The magnitude of the Jagruthi attained such ominous a proportion for the party that the leadership began to view her with an eye of suspicion. Her premeditated bid to gradually project herself as the heir apparent in the party, surreptitiously challenging the emergence of the patriarchal heir and her brother KTR as an uncrowned prince, has irked even the supremo.

As soon as KCR had smelt a rat in the Jagruthi activity, he had his daughter disband the organisation to eliminate any possible threat to the “rising son”.

For many years since then, she has been nursing a grievance within heart of hearts, though she never made her indignation explicit.

Nonetheless, she maintained her stranglehold on the “dormant” organisation - which “remained in exile”.

Kavitha, upon becoming the frontrunner to claim the legacy of her father in future, projected herself as the Telangana aadabidda (daughter of Telangana) by espousing the cause of Bathukamma festival.

She has, for close to a decade, attempted to epitomise herself as the “Bathukamma” of the BRS.

This had to be accepted, grudgingly though, by her known detractors within the party.

*Loss of election in Lok Sabha polls*

Her electoral loss for the first time in 2019 when the party was riding on the crest of its popularity, had her stopped in tracks from nursing the bigger ambitions.

She had ensured the resounding victory of the party in all the seven Assembly segments that comprised her Nizamabad Lok Sabha constituency, while she had herself lost to BJP nominee Dharmapuri Arvind.

Though she had never spared efforts to nurse the constituency, despite defeat, Kavitha could not win the seat even in 2024 Lok Sabha polls before which the BRS itself lost power in Telangana.

*Arrest in Delhi Liquor Scam*

Kavitha’s arrest in the Delhi Liquor Scam had asphyxiated the BRS by all means. Her incarceration for 164 days in Tihar jail dented the credibility of the BRS and embarrassed KCR beyond reasonable limits. No other leader or worker of the BRS was named as an accused in the scam.

The party grappled with the situation and KTR and Harish Rao kept on doing rounds to Delhi for confabulations with advocates to secure a bail for her.

The BRS had to downplay her arrest and its aftermath, while Kavitha gradually assumed an aggressive posture after her release on bail. Her regular jibes were initially perceived as blind shots without specific targets. But, she has been pretty clear on who she’s targeting.

The simmering differences within the palace reached a flash point when she was eased out of the position of Telangana Boggu Gani Karmika Sangham, a trade union affiliated to the BRS for Singareni Collieries Company Ltd.

Kavitha did not mince her words in fretting and fuming over her unceremonious removal and she had sharpened her criticism on the party. She dashed yet another missive to the party supremo expressing her rage. She had decried her removal in an “undemocratic” manner.

She launched her attack on former Minister Jagadish Reddy and attacked him calling him a “Lilliput”, deriding his height.

By then, matters worsened and things were precipitated within the party.

She, however, has portrayed herself as being loyal to KCR and on a couple of occasions organised dharnas against the Congress Government in the State and Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy for levelling charges against KCR. She, meanwhile, began playing the victim card within the party.

The tabling of the report of the PC Ghosh commission of inquiry into the a Kaleshwaram project and subsequent decision to order a CBI probe came in handy for her to take her differences with leadership in the party to a boiling point.

She lambasted Harish Rao and Santosh Rao holding them responsible for the black mark of CBI probe against KCR.

Cursing Harish Rao with the proverbial bell, book and candle, Kavitha accused him of large-scale corruption. She said that KCR had dropped Harish Rao from the Irrigation portfolio precisely for this reason.

Kavitha is nursing bigger ambitions without any doubt and is accused of hobnobbing with Revanth Reddy, albeit, from behind the scenes.

Though Kavitha and the Chief Minister criticise each other in public, the rank and file of the BRS always suspected that this was just a posturing for public consumption.

The Monday’s presser in which Kavitha, soon after her return from the United States of America, caused an implosion within the BRS. She, wittingly or unwittingly, given an impression that she was tacitly endorsing the accusation that KCR had presided over large-scale corruption in the Kaleshwaram project.

The rank and file were shaken, though it was very much expected. They are caught in a dilemma of whether or not to attack her, though the social media handles of the BRS began to troll her.

Kavita’s accusation that the party senior leadership made vain bids to broker a peace between the BRS and the BJP, which was blamed as responsible for her arrest, did not augur well for her.

Meanwhile, the BRS has given an “off-the-record” repartee by taking to “carpet combing” alleging that she was hand in glove with Chief Minister Revanth Reddy and she’s raised the banner of revolt at the behest of the Chief Minister.

The latest developments in the BRS are nothing short of an implosion.

Now that Kavitha has been suspended from the party for her “anti-party” activities, she decided to address a press conference on Wednesday, September 3, to air her views.

Kavitha, who was the powerful woman face of the party, is now outside the BRS. Her next political moves - from being a possible “heir” to an outcast - will surely be interesting to wait and watch.

The decision to cast her away from the party is a big decision, even as she’s out to snig many other leaders into the ring of allegations.

The party is wary of the consequences, but wants to put up a brave front.

The BRS, as of now, is in a disarray and became vulnerable amid the impending CBI probe into the Kaleshwaram project issue - legalities apart - and the possible trenchant attack by Kavitha.