Birth pangs of BRS

Hyderabad: Now that the TRS has been renamed as Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), the biggest challenge before party president K Chandrasekhar Rao is to get recognition to it as a national party.

KCR, who has been working on the necessary strategies for long, is now making some quick moves to gain party footprint in states like Gujarat and Karnataka and overcome the problems that the process of name change may face hindrances as there are three other parties which are unrecognised but registered with the Election Commission of India.

BRS, it may be recalled, will have to fulfil one of the several conditions laid down by the ECI to get itself recognised as a national party. The conditions include getting six percent vote share in the Assembly elections in any four states and 4 seats in the Lok Sabha polls. Another alternative is the party should get one seat plus six percent vote share in the Lok Sabha elections or two percent of all Lok Sabha seats and these seats should be from at least three states. Alternatively, it should get recognition as a state party in at least four states to become a national party. This means BRS can get national party status only after 2024 elections provided it fulfils any of these conditions.

It may be mentioned here that keeping this factor in view, the resolution passed by the TRS on Wednesday clearly said only the name of the party was being changed from TRS to BRS. No where did the resolution mention the word national party.

BRS and HD Kumaraswamy's JD-S in Karnataka are likely to fight the Assembly elections in some segments like Bidar, Gulbarga, Bellary, Raichur in the next elections which have sizeable number of Telugu speaking people. Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh will go to the polls in December this year. Karnataka elections will be held in May 2023. BRS may also field some candidates from Andhra Pradesh.