BJP’s September 17 campaign wants every battlefield
Textbooks, fee dues and crop insurance: the Telangana BJP is building an Opposition pitch, not yet displacing the BRS.
The BJP has assembled a wider Opposition pitch, but the principal chair remains vacant.
The Telangana BJP is turning September 17 into a wider campaign against the Congress government — and a bid to occupy Opposition space currently held by the BRS. Whether voters have handed it that space is another matter; the evidence shows a campaign, not a transfer of ownership.
BJP state president N Ramchander Rao has demanded that the party’s “Telangana Liberation Day” formulation, including Operation Polo, be added to school textbooks. The demand has been publicly reported, but the Telangana government has not published a decision or SCERT proposal on it. The BJP has also held protests over fee reimbursement. Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy told the Assembly that the government would release Rs 200 crore a month against an estimated Rs 2,500-crore liability, with payments to genuine colleges cleared in phases. The BJP says students are being affected; claims about eight lakh signatures and certificate withholding have not been independently established.
BJP MLAs have separately taken tractors to the Assembly demanding implementation of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana in Telangana, while seeking debate on 30 issues. The BRS has rejected the BJP’s claim to Opposition primacy, with T Harish Rao pointing to its own Assembly interventions. For now, the BJP has assembled a louder pitch. The principal Opposition chair remains unoccupied — but the Congress government is already being made to sit in it.