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Hyderabad: For a party that has spent the better part of two years shadowed by the question of whether it made a mistake, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) appears to have quietly settled on an answer. It isn’t going back to its original name of Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS).

Ever since the party’s defeat in the 2023 Telangana Assembly elections, speculation has swirled that the BRS might revert to its old identity, TRS, the name under which it governed the state for two consecutive terms before K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) rebranded it in 2022 with an eye on expanding into other states, particularly Maharashtra. 

At one point, that reversal looked all but inevitable. The speculation has only intensified in recent weeks, as KCR’s daughter, K Kavitha, has been trying to secure the TRS abbreviation for her newly launched outfit, Telangana Rakshana Sena, a dispute now before the Delhi High Court.

But according to senior BRS functionaries who spoke to Siasat.com, the internal appetite for a name reversal has all but evaporated.

“As of now, nobody in the party is raising it as an issue, so most likely the name will not go back to TRS. BRS will remain as it is,” a senior BRS functionary said. “Earlier, after our loss to the Congress in the 2023 Telangana elections, there was a feeling amongst many people within the organisation that the name change may have also added to the loss.”

That admission is itself notable, a rare acknowledgment from within the party that the rebrand to BRS may have cost it dearly at home. Yet the same leaders insist that whatever damage was done is now sunk cost, not a reason to reverse course.

A line the party won’t cross

Where the BRS is drawing a firm line is on letting Kavitha claim the TRS abbreviation for herself. Party insiders argue that allowing her outfit to operate under a name so close to the BRS’ old identity would confuse voters and split the base built over years of campaigning.

“While pink is the colour associated with the BRS, many people in rural areas still call it TRS, and having Kavitha get that name will not be good for us,” the functionary said.

The optics are hard to miss: a party unwilling to reclaim its old name for itself is simultaneously determined to stop a rival – one from within the founder’s own family – from using it. The subtext is less about nostalgia and more about electoral arithmetic in Telangana’s rural belt, where brand recognition still runs on old habits.

How the dispute reached the courts

The controversy traces back to the Election Commission’s decision to allot Kavitha’s new party the name Telangana Rakshana Sena, whose initials also spell TRS, a decision that reportedly surprised many observers at the time. Her party has pointed out that this wasn’t even the name it originally sought. It says it had applied for Telangana Praja Jagruthi, and that the EC assigned it the alternative name instead.

The Delhi High Court, where a case was filed over the matter, has now directed Kavitha’s outfit to respond to the Election Commission within a week, after her party’s chosen name drew a wave of formal objections.

In a press release issued on July 8, Kavitha’s party said that more than a thousand objections had reportedly been filed against the name, but that these had not been shared with them. The party has also questioned why the EC allotted this particular name at all, given that other entities holding similar names – the ones who raised the objections in the first place – already existed, calling the allotment inconsistent.

Have to respect KCR’s decision: BRS leaders

Within the party’s rank and file, the 2022 rebrand to BRS is still being defended as a bold, if costly, strategic bet, not a mistake to be undone.

“We had everything prepared, and it was fate that we lost the state elections here. But KCR would not have taken such a big step without thinking it through. So I don’t think the party will go back to its old name,” one senior leader told Siasat.com, framing the loss as circumstantial rather than a referendum on the rebrand itself.

Both leaders Siasat.com spoke to were emphatic that while Kavitha’s bid for the TRS name remains a live concern, any talk of the BRS itself reverting is now effectively passe. “We are confident of winning as things stand in the next elections, so there is no need for it anymore,” one of them said, a statement that reads as much like an attempt to project confidence as it does a genuine internal consensus.

Numbers behind the anxiety

That confidence sits against a backdrop that gives the party plenty to be anxious about. In the 2023 elections, the Congress won 64 of 119 seats, with the BRS trailing at 39, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) at seven, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at eight and the Communist Party of India, contesting in alliance with Congress, winning one.

Since then, roughly 10 BRS MLAs are believed to have defected to the ruling Congress, though many have avoided formally declaring the switch. Under the anti-defection law, an open declaration would force them to resign their seats and recontest, a legal safeguard that has left several defections in limbo, acknowledged neither by the MLAs themselves nor cleaned up by the party. 

Compounding the uncertainty, the BRS has reportedly refused to take back any legislators who may want to return to the fold, leaving a cohort of its own former representatives stranded.

Taken together, the episode suggests a party trying to project stability on the surface, holding firm on its identity, talking up its next-election prospects, while quietly managing a slow bleed of legislators and an unresolved family dispute that threatens to muddy its brand in the very rural strongholds it can least afford to lose.