The GHMC campaign was centred around comments on Pakistan, Jinnah and a Hindu-Muslim narrative, not civic issues
Whoever thought that a civic poll would create so much excitement, passion and polarisation? The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) election scheduled for today (December 1) has become an unprecedented high-profile political event. It is being fought with the same vigour as the Lok Sabha polls by not only the BJP, which is aiming high, but also by the other players like the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), the All-India Majlis-e-Ittehaadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) and the Congress Party. The BJP is ambitious and wants to replace the TRS. This is an indication of what will come in the 2023 Assembly polls. The party has an advantage because the Congress, which ruled the State, for many decades and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which was in power till a few years ago, left a space for the BJP to occupy. The TDP is almost wiped out and the Congress receded to fourth place in the recent Lok Sabha polls.
Eyebrows are being raised at the way the BJP has fielded national heavyweights for campaigning for a municipal poll, like the party chief JP Nadda, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Though he did not campaign, even Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Hyderabad to review the progress of the Covid-19 vaccine clinical research on November 28. First of all, the BJP, which surprised everyone by winning four Lok Sabha seats out of 17 in Telangana in 2019, got the momentum and continued with another surprise victory in the Dubbaka bypolls early in November. After the recent stunning performance in the Bihar Assembly elections, the party’s morale is high. Second, if the BJP wins the GHMC polls, it means that the saffron party is continuing its winning spree.
Moreover, the BJP is positioning itself to spread its footprint further South. As of now, the party is weak there as it has only one State Government (Karnataka) in its kitty. Third, the BJP wants to cut the AIMIM to size. The Asaduddin Owaisi-led AIMIM has always been strong in the Hyderabad region. Owaisi has expanded his party to Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The AIMIM is quite upbeat after winning five seats in the recent Bihar polls and wants to expand in West Bengal in next year’s Assembly elections, too. However, this will cut into the Muslim vote bank and it will be helpful for the BJP to split the Muslim votes. Even though the TRS has always contested against the AIMIM in every election, the former has enjoyed issue-based support from the latter. The two parties tactically announced that there would be no tie-up in the municipal polls in order to protect their turfs.
The BJP, the TRS and the AIMIM have all been generous in spending money and have more than adequate muscle power and manpower to fight this election for different reasons. The BJP wants to spread its wings further in the South. The AIMIM has always won in the Hyderabad region and is protecting its turf. As for the ruling TRS, it is a fight for its prestige. The party, which has been on a winning spree since the State was bifurcated in 2014, made a clever and surprise move by advancing the civic poll by two months. The TRS had won 99 seats in the previous civic elections while the AIMIM won 44 seats, the BJP three and the Congress two.
The BJP is attacking the TRS for its politics of appeasement. Plus, the recent flood relief measures have been inadequate. The Musi River that runs through the city was in spate last month and tanks and nullahs developed breaches and low-lying areas were waterlogged. About 50 municipal wards were affected due to it. The BJP cleverly wants to cash in on this. Interestingly, while the GHMC poll is normally fought on civic problems like water, sewerage, sanitation, roads and other amenities, the campaign showed a polarising trend. It was centred around polarising comments on Pakistan, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, allegations involving Rohingya refugees and a Hindu-Muslim narrative, not civic issues.
This led to the Director-General of Police Mahender Reddy to warn the parties after a security meeting. “They are trying to incite communal trouble. We are examining the speeches carefully. Action will be taken as per law against those trying to create disturbances,” he cautioned. Hyderabad has one of the largest Muslim populations for a city in India; about 44 per cent of the people in the city are Muslim while 52 per cent are Hindu. All the parties have been generous in promising sops to the electorate if they win. The BJP, the TRS and the Congress have promised free drinking water supply to the city, while the BJP has promised a free vaccine to tackle the Novel Coronavirus and renaming of Hyderabad as Bhagya Nagar.
The Chief Minister of Telangana, Kalvakuntla Chandrashekhar Rao, is threatening to mobilise a non-BJP Opposition front including the Trinamool Congress, the Samajwadi Party, the Nationalist Congress Party and so on, in an attempt to revive the anti-BJP front.
Opinion polls have come up with varied findings, giving the maximum seats to the TRS at 85, while almost all of them see the BJP winning nearly 30 per cent of the votes. The 35 votes of the MLAs and MPs in the region would go in favour of the TRS. However, it all depends on whom Dame Luck favours in the end.
(The writer is a senior journalist)
