Seeking to expand its electoral footprint beyond Telangana, the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) on Wednesday changed its name to Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS).
Over two decades after the founding of the party with the objective of carving out a separate Telangana from Andhra Pradesh, the party adopted a unanimous resolution at its general body meeting here, rechristening it as BRS.
Now, the goal is to take on the BJP and emerge as a national force to reckon with, bringing together like-minded parties.
In the presence of JD(S) leader HD Kumaraswamy, Tamil Nadu’s VCK leader Thol Thirumavalavan, TRS president and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao proposed the name change resolution and it was unanimously passed at the meeting.
Rao’s announcement of the name change was welcomed by party functionaries with a big round of applause and amid chants of “KCR Zindabad and TRS Zindabad.”
The change of name is to expand the party’s activities nationwide and the party’s constitution is also amended accordingly, Rao said.
The TRS rank and file, who gathered outside the Telangana Bhavan, the TRS headquarters here, went ecstatic and burst crackers and distributed sweets soon after the
announcement.
“Desh ke neta KCR” chants reverberated and similar slogans were seen in posters. “Desh ke neta KCR,” “Dear India he is coming”, and “KCR is on the way”, were among the slogans prominently displayed on banners that could be seen in and around the venue of the meet.
Rao, who has been very critical of the BJP for about a year, is expected to step up his attack against the saffron party and its Government at the Centre. Significantly, the name change move comes against the backdrop of next year’s Telangana Legislative Assembly election and the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. The BRS would showcase the welfare programmes being implemented in Telangana like ‘Rythu Bandhu’ investment support schemes for farmers and ‘Dalit Bandhu’ (grant of `10 lakh per household to Dalits).
The change of name by the TRS was welcomed by its friendly party AIMIM of Asaduddin Owaisi, while the Opposition BJP and Congress dismissed it as a non-starter.
Telangana PCC president Revanth Reddy alleged Rao has killed the existence of Telangana, and renaming the party is to settle family disputes and fulfill political greed.
Claiming that KCR is “not eligible” to contest elections in Telangana, Reddy said he strongly condemned Rao’s “evil ideas.”
Telangana BJP chief spokesperson K Krishna Sagar Rao dubbed Chief Minister Rao’s national political entry plan a “misadventurism.”
KCR’s “misadventurism” in planning national political entry, while struggling to keep his Government operational financially is an unworthy exercise, Sagar Rao said.
