Telengana Assembly Elections 2023: Details in a Nutshell (image: Twitter.com/BRS)

As Legislative Assembly Elections in Telengana are anticipated for later this year, it will witness a trilateral contest between the BJP, Congress, and ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS, the erstwhile TRS). Currently, BRS” K. Chandrasekhar Rao is running the government for the second time, and Congress is the main opposition party.

Telengana, a newly formed state in 2014, is bifurcated from Andhra Pradesh. This is the second time the state is facing assembly elections.

Mr. Rao took the charge as Chief Minister for the second time in 2018 after being collectively elected as the Leader of the then TRS Legislature Party. In the 2018 assembly election, TRS secured 87 seats out of 119, composing 49 percent of the total vote share. Similarly, in the first election in 2014, Mr. Rao took office as the Chief Minister by winning 63 seats.

In 2022, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) was renamed as BRS.

As part of upcoming election campaigns, Congress is planning to hold huge rallies on September 17, while the BJP, on the other hand, is strategising to use the Sanatana Dharma controversy to attack the opposition. Union Minister and BJP State President G Kishan Reddy, in his recent meeting asked the party colleagues, to put across the BRS, Congress, and AIMIM as anti-Sanatana Dharma parties and asked leaders, as the Deccan Herald reports, to “unite people against forces seeking to undermine Sanatan Dharma.”

Though the date of the election has yet to be announced by the Election Commission of India (ECI), it was expected to be in November–December 2023. However, BRS leader KT Rama Rao alleged recently that the Modi government’s plan for “One Nation, One Election” is to delay the polls in the state.