The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been on a roller-coaster ride ever since Telangana was formed. Having supported the separation of Andhra Pradesh with a slogan of ‘one vote, two States’, it had to keep mum during an alliance with the Telugu Desam Party for years.
Once the ‘separate State’ agitation picked up, it became part of the Joint Action Committee (JAC), supported the Telangana Bill in Parliament, and bagged five Assembly seats and one MP in the 2014 general elections when the Telangana Rastra Samiti (TRS), now Bharat Rastra Samithi (BRS), was voted to power.
The BJP got 7.1% vote share in the Assembly polls winning in Musheerabad (K.Laxman), Uppal (N.V.S.S. Prabhakar), Khairatabad (Chintala Ramachandra Reddy), Goshamahal (T. Raja Singh) and Amberpet (G.Kishan Reddy) while Bandaru Dattatreya won the Secunderabad parliamentary constituency with 10.1% votes.
