Telangana: Kavitha quits BRS as family drama intensifies

The family drama in the BRS (the Bharat Rashtra Samithi) — centred around the familiar tropes of power struggle, palace intrigues, shifting loyalties and betrayals — has intensified further, with party patriarch K. Chandrashekhar Rao’s defiant daughter K. Kavitha quitting primary membership of the party and giving up her seat as MLC.

The announcement came a day after her suspension from the party for making startling allegations of corruption against her cousins — former ministers T. Harish Rao and former Rajya Sabha member Santosh Rao — both close confidants of KCR. In fact, the duo constitute his inner circle of aides, whom Kavitha has dubbed the ‘ring of devils’.

Addressing a press conference in Hyderabad on 3 September, Wednesday, she sought to project herself as a victim of a conspiracy to defame the party founder and his family.

Displaying her resignation letter, addressed to her father, she said she was pained to see how the BRS supremo, hailed as the architect of the Telangana statehood movement, was now being framed in a corruption case involving the Kaleshwaram irrigation project.

While sparing her estranged brother, party working president K.T. Rama Rao, she trained her guns on her cousins, saying they had amassed illegal wealth and brought disgrace and disrepute to the party patriarch.

She also accused Harish and Santosh of being hand-in-glove with Congress chief minister A. Revanth Reddy, working to foist a CBI case against KCR to defame him.

Kavitha, a former MP from Nizamabad, warned her father against the “conspiracy being hatched against the family and the party” by his own nephews.

Asserting that she has never hankered after power herself, Kavitha said she had been tirelessly working for the party for the last two decades. “If the BRS is the hardware, Telangana Jagruthi (a cultural organisation she heads) is the software,” she said.

Ploughing a lonely furrow

It is clear from Kavitha’s outburst that she is preparing to tread her own political path, even while pledging complete loyalty to her father.

There is speculation in political circles that she might float a political outfit to fight for ‘social justice and empowerment of weaker sections’. But for now, Kavitha finds herself isolated in the party and in the family.

For his part, KCR too is in no mood for a reconciliation with his rebellious daughter.

For the BRS, already weakened after its 2023 assembly defeat and internal rifts, Kavitha’s revolt marks a fresh crisis. The suspension caps an intense family drama that was centred on predictable themes of loyalty and betrayal, power and pelf.

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There has been a hushed silence from the tight-knit regional party, run by KCR with an iron fist, after Kavitha made startling allegations of corruption against her cousins.

What embarrassed the opposition party further was that Kavitha’s stunning revolt came a day after the Congress government announced a CBI probe into allegations of irregularities in the execution of the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project (KLIP), a flagship initiative of the previous BRS regime.

By levelling corruption charges against her own party seniors, Kavitha has now virtually vindicated the ruling Congress’ position that massive irregularities took place in the execution of the Kaleshwaram project.

Ever since losing power in the December 2023 assembly polls, tensions have begun to crop up within KCR’s family. And now, the simmering power struggles have come to the fore.

Real target

Though she trained her guns on her cousins primarily, many political observers believe the real target of Kavitha’s anger and frustration is her estranged brother KTR, the chosen successor to his father’s political legacy. However, she has refrained from attacking him in public — for now.

Now that she has exited from the party, she is expected to go on the offensive, directly targeting KTR in the days ahead.  

Ever since KTR was anointed as the party working president in 2018, Kavitha has been demanding a bigger role for herself in the party. The sibling rivalry deepened further when she made it clear that she would not accept KTR as her ‘boss’.

Kavitha, who was arrested and jailed briefly last year for her alleged role in the Delhi liquor scam, is also peeved that the party leadership did not back her fully during those difficult times.  

The timing of her attack on the party insiders has stunned political circles in Telangana, however, as she accuses Harish and Santosh of amassing huge assets while making her father a ‘scapegoat’ in the Kaleshwaram scam.

“When a great leader like KCR is forced to face a CBI inquiry, does it even matter whether the BRS survives or not?” she has wondered aloud.

Reiterating that Harish Rao and Santosh played a major role in the Kaleshwaram project, Kavitha said that they, along with contractor Megha Krishna Reddy, were responsible for the current situation.

She has questioned why the party is not responding strongly to the investigation, saying that losing an election is one thing, but losing one’s honour is far worse.

“Why has the BRS not called for a Telangana bandh when Revanth Reddy announced a CBI probe into Kaleshwaram?” she asked.

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