Barring a huge personal and political embarrassment to party supremo K Chandrashekar Rao, his daughter K Kavitha's exit from the Bharatiya Rashtra Samithi (BRS) failed to impose heavy costs on the party.
Kavitha is not just a scion of former Chief Minister of Telangana, popularly called KCR. She also played a key role in the Telangana movement that the then Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) led, especially through its cultural wing Telangana Jagruti which Kavitha heads.
Post 2014, Kavitha enjoyed power as well, representing the party from the Nizamabad Lok Sabha segment. But she was banished to the Legislative Council after losing the subsequent Lok Sabha elections.
In fact, the revolt of Kavitha came at a most inopportune time for the patriarch. The BRS is not in power now, the Congress government is trying to put him in dock as the state government-appointed PC Ghosh Commission found KCR guilty in what is being alleged as a multi-crore irrigation scam, popularly referred to as the Kaleshwaram scam. The case is now being handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigations. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), meanwhile, is leaving no stone unturned to replace BRS as the principal Opposition party in the state in a bid to capture power in the 2028 Assembly elections.
The inheritance question remains unresolved with his son and the party working president KT Rama Rao and his nephew, T Harish Rao, vying for the ageing patriarch’s political legacy.Kavitha’s similar ambitions seem to have resulted in the current turbulence.