Ahead of polls, why Chief Minister KCR is sitting pretty in Telangana

As Telangana goes to polls in the first phase on April 11, a binary narrative of “KCR versus Others” is set to dominate the campaign theme in the state.

The reasons are not far to seek: Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao is sitting pretty after securing a resounding mandate in the recent Assembly elections for a second term while the opposition Congress camp is in a state of complete disarray suffering steady desertions. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP), once a formidable force in the region in the combined Andhra Pradesh, is fast losing relevance in the changed political dynamics post-bifurcation. The BJP, a fringe player at best, has been further weakened by the end of its alliance with the TDP.

In a battle that clearly appears one-sided, the question is how far can KCR’s Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) consolidate on the momentum it got in the December Assembly elections with a landslide victory, winning 88 seats in the 119-member Assembly.

While the ruling party has resources and campaign strategy in place, it is virtually a race against time for Congress, smarting under a humiliating drubbing in the Assembly, to get its act together with the LS polls hardly a month away.

Telangana has 17 Lok Sabha seats. The TRS, which had won 11 in the 2014 elections, is contesting 16 seats this time, leaving Hyderabad to its ally All India Majlis Ittehadul Muslimeem (AIMIM) whose president Asaduddin Owaisi has been representing the constituency since 2004.

There is a buzz in political circles that KCR will announce, in a day or two, the candidates for all the seats at one go, in a repeat of a strategy he had adopted in the Assembly polls.

Congress-mukt Telangana  

The TRS supremo appears to be working towards making the state ‘Congress-mukt’, a goal that was originally set for the country by the BJP. Since the declaration of assembly results on December 11, four Congress legislators have crossed over to TRS, reducing the party’s tally to 15. Another senior Congress leader and former Minister Sabita Indra Reddy from the neighbouring Ranga Reddy district is also expected to switch loyalty.

The Congress has been unable to find traction in India’s youngest state despite having granted statehood for the region in 2014.

The absence of a strong and charismatic regional leader with a statewide appeal, fierce infighting and groupism and lack of a cohesive campaign strategy to take on the TRS were among the factors that led to the party’s poor show in the Assembly polls. The opposition party, which had won just two LS seats in the previous elections, is desperate to improve its tally.

The party leaders hope that since the coming LS poll battle would be between two competing national narratives, one represented by Rahul Gandhi and another by Narendra Modi, the Congress would have an edge.

Failure of alliance experiment

The opposition party will go it alone as the ‘Maha Kutami’ (grand alliance) experiment, involving Congress, TDP, CPI and Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS), failed miserably in the Assembly polls.

Though the calculation in the Congress camp was that the arithmetic of the combined opposition would work in its favour, the TRS had succeeded in a building a narrative that the Congress had joined hands with the “enemies of Telangana” like Chandrababu Naidu of TDP to capture power and “mortgage the Telangana self-respect in the streets of Amaravati (Andhra capital).”

A significant feature of the coming LS polls is that the TDP, which had won one seat in the previous elections, may not even field candidates in the state. It’s task is cut out in neighbouring AP where it is caught in a multi-cornered battle against the YSR Congress, Jana Sena, BJP and Congress.

New slogan

“Saar plus car ante Delhilo sarkar” ( KCR and TRS’s car symbol will mean our government in Delhi)” is the new slogan of TRS which is keen on renewing the efforts to push its idea of Federal Front, a national alternative to Congress and BJP. When the proposal was first mooted by KCR in March last year, there were no takers for it. The idea behind the Federal Front is to foster true federal spirit by strengthening the voice of the regional parties in the Parliament and end the domination of the two national parties.

The TRS’ calculation is that the coming elections would throw up a “1996-type fractured mandate” and the Federal Front of regional parties would be able to play a decisive role in the government formation. “The regional aspirations will find greater resonance in such a coalition arrangement at the Centre,” says TRS’ working president and chief minister’s son K T Rama Rao. “It is time to realize that development of States will lead to nation’s development. Though the Constitution has said that India will be a Union of States, what has emerged so far is a ‘Unitary State’ instead of a true Union of States,” he says.