BRS looks to take a leaf out of DMK’s book to revive party in T

Hyderabad: After assembly poll defeat and drawing a blank in the Lok Sabha elections, the BRS is now on a quest to find its poll bearings. Having stayed away from both the NDA and INDIA bloc in LS polls, the BRS is now looking at a key INDIA ally DMK — a regional powerhouse that has successfully kept national parties at bay in Tamil Nadu — to revive itself in Telangana.
The pink party’s focus is mainly on the organisational set-up of the DMK, which has a strong grassroots presence unlike the BRS.


As part of studying the best practices of the TN party, BRS’ former MP and ex-whip Balka Suman, ex-sports authority chairman Anjaneyulu Goud and Ravinder Reddy toured Tamil Nadu, including Tiruvallur and Chennai West districts on Aug 11 and 12. They interacted with DMK leaders, including party organising secretary RS Bharathi, to understand their organisational structure and strengths.
The two regional parties have a few similarities such as both had emerged from movements and promote local culture, festivals and languages. Also, like the late M Karunanidhi for DMK, the BRS has a strong leader in KCR.
But where DMK scores high is its strong and deep organisational structure from village level. The DMK has nearly two crore members, and committees at village, constituency, district and state level. The committee members interact twice or thrice a month, organise party programmes effectively and discuss local issues. The BRS now wants to strengthen the party from the grassroots.
“Every village has a parent committee and four other committees such as mahila, youth, IT and student wings. Each wing has 10 members. At the constituency, district and state level, there are 23 committees for various sectors and sections of the people. For organisational convenience, though the state has 38 districts, the DMK is divided into nearly 70 districts,” Balka Suman told TOI.
Suman said they would submit a report to BRS working president KT Rama Rao soon and the party would discuss it.
The BRS had been planning to study the functioning of both DMK and AIADMK for the past two years as national parties have failed to thrive on their own and always forced to strike an alliance with either of the parties in every election. KTR had earlier also met DMK leader Kalanidhi Veeraswamy and TKS Elangovan when they visited Hyderabad two years ago to hand over a letter addressed by TN CM MK Stalin on the NEET issue.