The victory of the Congress in the 2023 Assembly elections was certainly not a foregone conclusion. Just a few months after Revanth Reddy became the TPCC chief in June 2021, the party bagged just around 3,000 votes in the Huzurabad byelection. And a year later, in the Munugode bypoll, the party again lost its deposit.
“I will see your end. My time will come”. This was Revanth to K Chandrasekhar Rao, the first chief minister of Telangana, in 2015. Revanth had been arrested after being caught red-handed by the ACB for allegedly offering Rs 50 lakh to a nominated MLC to vote in favour of the candidate of his then party, the TDP.
With the ruling TRS (later BRS) decimating the TDP in Telangana, Revanth joined the Congress in 2017 and soon became its working president. After a bitter loss from Kodangal in the 2018 Assembly elections, Revanth soon recovered and won from Malkajgiri, India’s largest Lok Sabha constituency in terms of the number of electors, in 2019. Revanth soon became the Telangana PCC chief less than three years after he joined the grand old party, ahead of many senior leaders.
He didn’t let the initial setbacks in Huzurabad and Munugode affect him. Despite murmurs of discontent within his party after the huge losses, he went ahead with his Yuva Sangarshana Sabhas and padayatras to infuse his fighting spirit into the party cadre.
The TPCC chief was the only state Congress leader to campaign all across Telangana ahead of the 2023 Assembly polls with 55 elections meeting in the state, while others were confined to their regions and segments. This, despite the fact that he was taking on KCR from Kamareddy and also contesting from his traditional seat, Kodangal.
Revanth’s central role in the campaign made the choice of chief minister relatively easy for the usually faction-ridden Congress. He was sworn in as Telangana’s second CM on December 7, four days after the results, in the presence of Sonia Gandhi.
When he was 31, Revanth spoke to a close friend about his ambition of becoming chief minister one day. For many others, that would have been just another daydream, but the hardworking Revanth finally made it.
