Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao started his political jigsaw puzzles, strategies and mind games from the day of formation of the state and succeeded in a row to combat the intrusions, opposition attacks, incumbacy and political attacks.
As the times goes, things became normal and his master strategies and powerful decisions dominates.
After a year, political seriousness and command visible to the public and party strengthen further with a thumping majority in the civic polls across the state.
Second year gone with same impression with minor brickbrats and little anti-party activities, which was intelligently handled by the party top brass. Here, KCR makes a big blow with announcing the unbelievable welfare schemes for minorities which makes the opposition to think twice. Entire country, media and public got diverted on this announcements of Muslims reservations and many welfare schemes.
Third year is the year of aggressions and agony towards implementing the declared schemes. Apart from Muslims, many others come forward alleging the delay in fulfillment of the promised welfare schemes. Anti-incumbency activities started, leadership makes very hazy and uncomfortable statements but public ire shakes the party decisions over welfare schemes. Here, once again opposition become active and started attacking on TRS.
Based on several surveys and intelligence reports and cadre feedback, KCR – the sole decision power, tries to calm with an initiative of ‘Third Front’ formation which makes no impact on public or opposition. At last, he flew to Delhi and met PM Modi to discuss the situation and possibilities of ties and toes. And come out with a clever idea of ‘early polls’.
Telangana is scheduled to have its assembly election along with the general election in April-May 2019.
In March, Telangana Chief Minister Kalvakuntla Chandrasekhar Rao issued a call for national and regional political parties to come together for a non-BJP, non-Congress front. His West Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee backed him. But some felt KCR, as Rao is better known, was only serious about the non-Congress part of his statement.
He gave credence to that view when he skipped the swearing-in ceremony of Karnataka CM HD Kumaraswamy, which saw leaders from the Congress, the Left and several regional parties, including Banerjee, putting up a united front against BJP. KCR had met Kumaraswamy earlier to avoid being seen with Congress, the key rival of his party Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) in the state.
Rumours of KCR cosying up to BJP gathered steam when he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on June 15, and son KT Rama Rao followed suit two weeks later.
Days after meeting Modi, KCR said he was ready to face early polls. Telangana is scheduled to have its assembly election along with the general election in April-May 2019. However, after KCR’s statement, there is speculation that BJP could be keen on advancing the general election and that it could be held along with state polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram in December this year.
The upcoming assembly election will be Telangana’s first. The Congress, which failed to capitalise on its role in forming Telangana in the 2014 polls, is hoping for a better show this time. (The Congress was in power in Andhra and led the United Progressive Alliance at the Centre when the decision to bifurcate Andhra was taken in 2013.)
A new party called Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS) — floated by M Kodandaram, a key figure of the Telangana movement and a former professor of political science — has also joined the fray. But the election is still very much KCR’s to lose.
There is no clarity on the big question, though: which side will he be on? “BJP is TRS’s ally in the opposition and will split the anti-TRS vote,” says K Nageshwar, a senior journalist. However, K Kavitha, KCR’s daughter and TRS MP, disputes that. “We are not close to BJP. As a new state, we need to have a working relationship with the Centre.” She adds that the possibility of a third front still exists. BJP also denies it is close to TRS. “We are taking out a yatra against the TRS government and we will fight the elections on our own,” says G Kishan Reddy, a BJP legislator.
TRS may not want to be seen close to BJP, given that Muslims comprise nearly 13 per cent of the state population and could determine the outcome in 48 of 119 assembly seats. (Telangana has passed a legislation to up Muslim quota in government jobs and educational institutes from 4 per cent to 12 per cent , and ST quota from 6 per cent to 10 per cent . It requires a constitutional amendment as the state’s total reservation will exceed 50 per cent.)
Telangana, India’s 29th and youngest state, was carved out of Andhra Pradesh in June 2014, post the general election and after a long, violent struggle, of which KCR ended up being the political face. He rode on the formation of Telangana to win 63 of 119 assembly seats and 11 of 17 Lok Sabha seats.
TRS polled more than a third of the votes in both elections. Four years on, there is no leader in the state who can match him in stature.
Nageshwar says that KCR’s unrivalled popularity does not guarantee the TRS a win. “In 1989, there was no Congress leader worth their name to match NT Rama Rao, but Congress still defeated TDP.” NT Rama Rao or NTR was a film star who founded the Telugu Desam Party and became the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh in 1983. Andhra’s present CM, N Chandrababu Naidu, is NTR’s son-in-law. KCR was in TDP till 2001, when he quit to form TRS.
Congress is hopeful that it can turn the tide in the next election. The party bagged a quarter of the votes and won 21 assembly seats in 2014. But there’s a problem: seven of its MLAs have defected to TRS, which also won by-polls to two constituencies previously held by Congress. It’s not just Congress that is losing its legislators. TDP has lost 12 of its 15 MLAs to TRS, and all three legislators of Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP), headed by YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, have also jumped ship to TRS.
Engineering defections is one way TRS has significantly weakened the opposition. Even three opposition MPs have joined TRS. (The party has been criticised for flouting the antidefection law.)
G Kishan Reddy, BJP spokesperson, says the party wants to replace the embattled Congress as the second largest party and eventually form the government, which seems unlikely in the near future.
Bhatti Vikramarka, Congress MLA and working president of the party’s state unit, says the voters saw Congress as the enemy in 2014, and backed TRS, which was closely identified with the movement. He says TRS has failed to achieve the objectives of the Telangana movement. “It’s family rule instead of self-rule, which was one of the demands of the movement,” he says. KCR’s son KT Rama Rao and nephew T Harish Rao are part of the state cabinet.
Vikramarka also alleges that the government’s land regularisation scheme has recognised the rights of historical owners of the land rather than those of tenant farmers, who are said to account for more than 40 per cent of farmers in the state. Land rights have been central to the three key movements in Telangana’s history — the peasant rebellion of the late 1940s, the Naxal movement in the 1960s and 1970s, and the fight for Telangana.
Vikramarka says Congress’s agenda for the next election will reflect voters’ aspirations. To put up a credible fight against TRS, the party has to first overcome internal conflicts. There is talk that it will form an alliance with the new party Telangana Jana Samithi.
Vikramarka denies it: “People voted for the leaders of Telangana movement in 2014 and have since realised that it was a mistake. They won’t vote for them again.” Kodandaram also makes light of the speculation.
He was chair of the Telangana Joint Action Committee, a pressure group that united political parties, civil society and students during the movement. He has been quite critical of the KCR government since 2016. G Haragopal, a political scientist, says, “KCR represented the political stream of the movement and Kodandaram represented civil society. Given the feudal politics (of TRS), a convergence was not possible.” Kodandaram says the Telangana movement made the people of the state politically conscious.
“We are doing something to redefine politics.” Talking of the parallels between his party and the Aam Aadmi Party, he says the latter’s success in Delhi has shown a party can win without money. But Haragopal does not agree: “Electoral politics needs huge resources and he cannot command those resources.”
Kodandaram will be sharpening his attacks on KCR in the run-up to the polls and will focus primarily on rural distress and unemployment. He has called KCR India’s first CM to work from home, referring to the CM’s 1,00,000 sq ft residence and office complex, which was reportedly built at a cost of nearly Rs 40 crore in 2016. “I don’t think he will make much of a difference in the election,” says Kavitha.
Meanwhile, the panchayat polls, which were to be held in July, can now only be held after enumeration of the state’s backward classes population, according to a recent ruling by the Hyderabad High Court.
When the assembly election comes around, KCR will be betting on his government’s projects and populist schemes to keep him in power. The most recent of his schemes, which could have an impact in the polls, is an annual payout of Rs 8,000 per acre, divided equally between the kharif and rabi seasons, to each of the 5.8 million farmers, costing the exchequer nearly Rs 12,000 crore every year, and a Rs 5 lakh life insurance cover for farmers.
His government promised three acres of land to each Dalit family, but so far only 5,000 families have got the land, according to the government’s latest progress report. On a scheme to build free two-bedroom apartments for the poor, the opposition has said only 1,500 units have been built out of the sanctioned 2.65 lakh units.
Among other flagship initiatives are a Rs 20,000 crore project to revive 46,500 minor irrigation tanks by 2020 and a Rs 40,000 crore project to provide piped drinking water to the state’s 8.4 million households. The state has also spent over Rs 50,000 crore on irrigation projects between 2014-15 and 2017-18 and has budgeted nearly Rs 25,000 crore for 2018-19.
All these schemes have taken their toll on the state finances. The state’s debt is expected to rise to 21.4 per cent of its gross domestic product in 2018-19 from 16.1 per cent in 2014-15. Moreover, the CAG, in its audit report, said the state had reported a revenue surplus of Rs 1,386 crore in 2016-17, thanks to irregular accounting, while it actually had a revenue deficit of Rs 5,392 crore. The CAG also found lapses in the project to revive tanks and lift irrigation schemes.
These criticisms by the opposition and the CAG are unlikely to matter in the polls. “Corruption allegations against the TRS government have not become a talking point among the people,” says Asaduddin Owaisi, president of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), which is close to the TRS and won seven assembly seats in 2014. He expects TRS to get half the votes in the next election.
He believes the recent largesse to farmers has neutralised the discontent in villages. Finding a fix for the issue of jobs may be much harder. Of the 1 lakh government jobs KCR promised, only 35,000 positions have been filled.
Nageshwar says the creation of the state is still fresh in people’s minds and there is still hope. That, combined with the opposition’s lack of a leader, should give KCR the edge he needs to secure a second term. #KhabarLive
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