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Not only are the 2028 Karnataka and Telangana elections being viewed as a chance for a “display of strength” before the 2029 Lok Sabha polls, they also offer the BJP an opening to permanently reinforce its base in southern India.
The 2028 Assembly elections in Karnataka and Telangana may still be nearly two years away, but the BJP-RSS combine’s political roadmap for them already seems to be taking shape.
Not only are the Karnataka and Telangana elections being regarded as an opportunity for a “show of strength” by the BJP-led NDA before the 2029 Lok Sabha elections, they also represent the final opportunity for the BJP-RSS to decisively cement their foothold in southern India ahead of what could become a fourth straight term at the Centre. According to sources, they will additionally provide a chance to operationalise recent lessons in tackling regional political forces.
Insiders attempted to emphasise the combine’s organisational and electoral attention on the two southern states through consecutive visits by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah within days of the BJP’s victory in West Bengal and its retaining power in Assam and Puducherry in the recent Assembly elections.
In Karnataka, both Modi and Shah highlighted the legacy of Lingayat stalwart and senior BJP leader B S Yediyurappa in Bengaluru on May 9, urging party workers to “make the lotus blossom in Karnataka”. Yediyurappa is a former four-time Chief Minister of Karnataka.
A day later, as the Vijay-led Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagham (TVK)’s Cabinet was being administered oath in Tamil Nadu, Modi travelled to Telangana, which the BJP has never managed to electorally dominate since the state’s formation in 2014. After inaugurating multiple projects in Hyderabad, Modi reminded party workers that the state had contributed one of the BJP’s lowest state tallies of Lok Sabha seats at merely two in the 2024 polls, and urged them to secure a BJP government with a “prachand bahumat (massive majority)” in the state.
On the other hand, RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat inaugurated a temple dedicated to Sangh founder Keshav Baliram Hegdewar in Telangana in April. As recently as May 7, days ahead of Modi’s visit to both states, the RSS chief had travelled to Karnataka’s Chikodi, where the RSS’s first shakha historically emerged in the 1930s, and spoke about a “demographic imbalance” in India during an event in Mysuru.
Neither the BJP nor the RSS have softened their articulation regarding the significance of Sanatan Dharma as the cornerstone of its ideology, presenting it as synonymous with nationalism. However, while Sanatan Dharma mostly appeared in routine political discourse as something of an umbrella term collectively referring to Hindu culture and traditions since the BJP’s rise to power in 2014, this shifted in 2023.
While Bhagwat described it as the “essential nature of Bharat” at one gathering after another, Modi, following remarks calling for the “eradication of Sanatan Dharma” made by DMK leader Udhayanidhi Stalin in 2023, grouped the entire INDIA bloc of Opposition parties as “anti-Sanatan” forces. Since then, the phrase steadily evolved into an ideological bulwark for the RSS-BJP to confront regional political satraps.
According to sources, encouraged by its sweep of West Bengal, Assam and a comparatively modest rise in its vote share in Tamil Nadu, the BJP-RSS combine has already started reactivating its extensive grassroots machinery in Karnataka and Telangana with emphasis on the themes of “dynastic politics among regional parties” and amplifying the narrative around “anti-Sanatan Dharma forces” as part of outreach that is expected to continue for the foreseeable future in both states as well as beyond them.
Bordering the Sangh’s birthplace of Maharashtra’s Nagpur, the RSS’s organisational foundations, as well as those of its most influential leaders, lie in Karnataka and Telangana, where the RSS has remained active since the 1930s, less than a decade after it was founded in 1925. Today, the two states form a regional bastion with thousands of daily shakhas each.
These shakhas – over 4,100 in Karnataka and 3,400 in Telangana, according to the RSS – will progressively, sources said, become the nucleus of the RSS-BJP’s electoral attempt to consolidate itself in the south. Across its 100 years of existence, the RSS says its network of shakhas has expanded to nearly 90,000 and the locations where these are based to more than 55,000.
“The Sangh has, historically, been deeply active on the ground in what is now the state of Telangana. In 1984, senior Jana Sangh leader with close ties to the RSS, Chandupatla Janga Reddy, had defeated Congress stalwart P V Narasimha Rao, who became Prime Minister seven years later, from Hanamkonda, underscoring the strength of the organisation in the state,” said an insider.
“When it comes to Karnataka, the strength of the Sangh’s organisational connections and roots in the region is demonstrated by the fact that some of the most prominent early Pracharaks came, and continue to come, from it,” the insider added.
Reddy was one of first two Jana Sangh MPs to make it to the Lok Sabha from what was then-undivided Andhra Pradesh. Meanwhile, some of the RSS’s most notable figures hail from Karnataka, one of the earliest expansion grounds for the Sangh.
RSS founder and its first Sarsanghchalak Hegdewar’s family originated from Nizamabad in Telangana, and its third chief Madhukar Dattatraya Deoras came from Telugu lineage. Incumbent Sarsanghchalak Bhagwat’s predecessor K S Sudarshan hailed from Mysore, while prominent former Sarkaryawah (or general secretary) H V Sheshadri, current Sarkaryawah Dattatreya Hosabale, and BJP general secretary (organisation) B L Santhosh all trace their origins to Karnataka.
Old ties, new plank
From alleged forced religious conversions to allegations of “love jihad” in a state that in 2022 witnessed controversy over Muslim government school students wearing the traditional hijab, community consolidation around “Hindu awakening” has seen the RSS’s footprint grow beyond the coastal regions of Dakshina Kannada and Udupi in Karnataka.
The Sangh is currently in the midst of statewide initiatives aimed at broadening its grassroots appeal in regions such as Old Mysore through around 3,000 ongoing outreach programmes.
In Telangana, with liberation from the rule of the erstwhile Nizam and Indian nationalism at its core, the Sangh has steadily widened more coverage to its outreach and, according to RSS records, reached nearly 25 lakh households through more than 10,700 volunteers in 2025.
Having been assessed, sources said, to have had a substantial effect on the NDA’s electoral performances, including an increased vote share in Tamil Nadu, the dynasticism and “anti-Sanatan” factors are likely to remain central to the BJP-RSS’s campaign for the two states.
“The dynasticism plank helped raise questions regarding corruption and anti-incumbency; more importantly, emphasis on the anti-Sanatan (dharma) remarks of Opposition leaders such as Udaynidhi Stalin (of the DMK), Abhishek Banerjee (of the TMC) in West Bengal, and Congress’s Gaurav Gogoi in Assam, helped the BJP shed the ‘outsider’ label from the broader perspective of Sanatan Dharma,” a source said.
“There is no shortage of such sentiments which have been expressed by leaders such as Chief Minister Siddaramiah and his Cabinet colleague Priyank Kharge in Karnataka and Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy. These issues will find place in the Sangh’s vimarsh (consultation) outreach after a few loose organisational ends are tied up, especially in Karnataka, and later in the official campaign for these states,” the source added.
“While specific issues will differ depending on the ground situation from state to state – forced (religious) conversions in Punjab (which goes to the polls in 2027) may not attract as much traction on the ground as Muslim appeasement through the caste survey by the Congress government in Karnataka – the electoral lessons concerning the Sanatan Dharma narrative from West Bengal and Tamil Nadu are invaluable and will continue to feature in strategies for future state elections,” another source said.