K Chandrasekhar Rao passed the Assembly poll test with flying ‘pink’ colour on Tuesday as his much-trumpeted ‘sops story’ thumped the Congress-Telugu Desam Party (TDP) combine’s ‘sob story’ about India’s youngest revenue-surplus State having been turned into a major debtor by the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief.
The Congress-led grouping named itself the People’s Front but the masses went with KCR, as Rao is popularly known, and gave him a second term at the helm. Not just him, the Telangana electorate even ensured victories for KCR’s son KT Rama Rao and nephew T Harish Rao, rejecting the “nepotism” and “family rule” charges against him.
The results should serve as a major learning experience for the Congress. Working overtime to stitch up a mahagathbandhan to take on the BJP’s might in the 2019 Lok Sabha poll, it should know the complexities at the regional levels, that too, involving regional satraps.
In the Lok Sabha poll that is just months away, the Congress may have to rethink its strategy of joining hands with its foe-turned-friend TDP, which is seen by the people in the State as a party that had opposed Telangana’s creation. In fact, TDP, which had 15 MLAs in the dissolved Assembly, could win just 2 seats even as it contested 13 seats in all.
KCR lost no time in announcing his intention of delving into national politics now that he is firmly in the saddle in the State. Also, having not taken Chandrababu Naidu’s “meddling” in Telangana politics lightly, he has already cautioned the TDP chief about his plans to extract revenge.
In Telangana, it was KCR’s sop distribution-cum-promises spree involving most sections of the society that led the voters to come out in droves to propel him to power.
From distributing sheep to the shepherds to sarees to the poor on Bathukamma festival; from acreage-wise financial assistance to the farmers to pension to the elderly; from mopeds to fishermen to allowances to pujaris—KCR had been doling out sops at regular intervals.
Going into the polls, KCR chose to wait till the fag end of the electoral process to kick-off to open his bounty bag. And out came the promises that ranged from doubling of the pension amounts to unemployment allowance to double bedroom houses to reservations to the minorities and Scheduled Tribes to increasing retirement age of government employees. And in election rally after rally, he trumpeted his sop story to convince the voters there was no better Santa than him.
KCR’s reading of the ground realities has been bang on. Riding on his populist policies, his gamble to dissolve the Assembly eight months before its term ended and go for elections paid off as the TRS’ pink (party’s traditional colour) wave swept the urban and rural divide alike cornering nearly 47 percent of the popular votes. That KCR remains the most popular leader with a standing unmatched in the State needs no further proof.
No wonder then that the TRS’ ranks under him regularly swelled during the last four years. The TRS won 63 seats in 2014 but by the time it went to polls its numbers stood at 82, with Chandrababu Naidu’s TDP being the biggest victim as it saw a dozen of its MLAs switching allegiance over time. The TRS bettered even that tally now as it bagged 88 of the total Assembly 119 seats, with the Congress at a distant second with 19 seats, three less than it got in 2014.
The verdict also made it clear that TRS would need neither the support of Asaduddin Owaisi’s AMIM nor the BJP, both of whom had offered their support to KCR in case of a fractured verdict. While the AMIM could somehow retain its tally of seven seats, the BJP saw a fall in its numbers, from five to just one seat, despite the party giving it all in the State.
Whether KCR will live up to his threat and try to inflict losses on Naidu in Andhra Pradesh will be keenly watched, just as his bid to outshine his arch-rival to cobble up an anti-BJP anti-Congress front.
