Another Backward Class leader abandons BJP, 4th to move to TRS ahead of Munugode bypoll

He said he was quitting as the BJP was encouraging divisive politics in the country.

He said that though it was not his habit to heap abuses on the party that he was leaving, he was, nonetheless, compelled to raise some issues in the hope that the BJP would introspect and make a course-correction.

In his letter, Anand Bhaskar recalled his participation in the satyagraha at the Mahatma Gandhi statue on Parliament premises when the BJP-led Centre launched GST in 2017, demanding treatment for the handloom sector on par with raw salt.

‘Ignored, humiliated, excluded’

The then finance minister, the late Arun Jaitely, had heard out his argument for zero GST on cotton, silk, wool, jute, and other natural fibres. Though his demand was not considered, the GST, which was proposed at 18 percent, was reduced to five percent, he said.

Anand Bhaskar said that after joining the BJP on April 4, 2019, he was ignored, humiliated, underrated and excluded from playing any part at the national level.

He said he had noticed with growing dismay how the BJP leadership was ignoring regional sentiments and languages. The party was trying to impose one language on the entire nation, he said.

Latest BC leader lured by TRS

Bhaskar is the latest addition to the BJP BC leaders who have quit the saffron party, after former Telangana Legislative Council chairman K Swami Goud, Telangana activist Dasoju Sravan, former legislator Budida Bikshamaiah joined the TRS.

The TRS lured the BJP leaders apparently to exact revenge against the party for spiriting away former TRS MP Boora Narsaiah Goud.

After losing Narsaiah Goud, the TRS has been successful in reaching out to the BC leaders in other parties, particularly in BJP, in an effort to wreck the saffron party from within.

After Narsaiah Goud joined the BJP, the TRS seems to have realised that ruffling the feathers of the BCs could have disastrous consequences for the upcoming Munugode by-election, and has ever since been concentrating on pleasing them to the extent possible.

Why BCs matter in Munugode

Already the BCs, who happen to be more than half of the electorate in the Munugode Assembly segment, are sore with the TRS, and, for that matter, with the remaining two parties — BJP and the Congress — for not fielding their caste men as the candidates in the fray.

Quick to see the resentment brewing among the BCs against the party, IT Minister and TRS Working President KT Rama Rao has been focusing mainly on luring BCs leaders from the BJP, with a fair degree of success.

He has of late been espousing the BCs’ cause, particularly those of the handloom weavers, by painting Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the villain of the piece for imposing GST on handloom products.

Anand Bhaskar has already given an indication that he would be joining the TRS after he called on Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Sunday.

He later praised KCR sky-high for the welfare schemes that he had taken up in the state. He expressed his keenness to join the TRS and work under his leadership.

Anand Bhaskar, a journalist, was a Congress Rajya Sabha member between 2012 and 2018. He is from the Padmashali community.