E-Paper
Chronicling political journey of TRS spanning 2 decades
TRS working president and KCR’s son KT Rama Rao (KTR) said the chief minister has been striving to develop Telangana into the number one state in the country with the same commitment.
“Main akela hi chala tha janib-e-manzil magar log saath aate gaye aur karvan banta gaya.”
(I set off alone towards my goal, but, people came along and it began to turn into a caravan). Telangana Rashtra Samithi president and chief minister Kalvakuntla Chandrasekhar Rao once quoted this popular verse written by famous Urdu poet Majrooh Sultanpuri, while describing his journey towards his goal of achieving separate statehood to Telangana region from the combined Andhra Pradesh.
KCR was virtually alone when he resigned from the post of deputy speaker in the Andhra Pradesh state assembly and Telugu Desam Party headed by N Chandrababu Naidu in 2001 to take up the cause of Telangana, which was facing discrimination by successive governments in the united Andhra Pradesh.
When he floated the TRS in a small portion of Jala Drushyam, a bungalow of veteran Telangana leader Konda Laxman Bapuji on the banks of Hussainsagar lake in the heart of Hyderabad on April 27, 2001, there were hardly any leaders with him, as they were sceptical about the success of such a movement for achieving statehood to Telangana.
The Telangana region, which was merged with erstwhile Andhra state to form Andhra Pradesh in November 1956, had witnessed several movements for separation, the biggest being that in 1969-71 which turned violent and claimed several lives.
There were quite a few attempts to revive the movement for separate Telangana subsequently, but they could not be sustained due to either lack of willpower from the leaders or lack of efforts to convert them into mass movements.
So, there was no surprise when KCR began his journey, everybody thought it would also be a fly-by-night experiment like the previous ones. But now, after 20 years, KCR has not only proved the sceptics wrong by achieving statehood to Telangana, but also developed the TRS as one of the most powerful regional parties in the country.
On Monday, the TRS is celebrating its 20th year of foundation with over 6,000 delegates attending the plenary to be held at sprawling Hyderabad International Convention Centre, where KCR would be re-elected as the party president. Though the event was supposed to be held in April this year, it was deferred due to second wave of coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.
“The success has not come so easily. We had to struggle a lot to enlighten the people of Telangana and faced several ups and downs during the 13-years-long movement to achieve the statehood. Our commitment to the cause and our fighting spirit led to the formation of Telangana in June 2014,” TRS working president and KCR’s son K T Rama Rao told reporters on Saturday while reviewing the arrangements for the plenary.
He said the chief minister had been striving to develop Telangana into a number one state in the country with the same commitment. “In the last seven years, Telangana has become a role model for other states so much so that people in the borders area of neighbouring states are demanding that they be merged with Telangana,” KTR said.
TWO DECADES OF TRS
Unlike in the case of earlier movements for Telangana statehood, KCR adopted a two-pronged strategy – leading a mass movement to galvanise people to agitate for statehood, while carrying out a political movement by fighting the electoral battles, as he strongly believed that statehood cannot be achieved only through battles on streets but through a political process which involved the Centre.
Within a few months of its inception, the TRS won substantial number of mandal parishad (block parishad) and zilla parishad seats, thereby indicating groundswell of support to KCR. At the same time, he travelled to different parts of Telangana to kick start a debate on issues confronting the region.
During the movement, KCR raked up three issues – “Neellu, Nidhulu, Niyaamakalu” (Water, funds and recruitments), in which Telangana was allegedly facing discrimination from Andhra rulers and they became part of the TRS campaign in the subsequent years.
Since KCR was aware that statehood could be achieved only through a political process involving the Centre, he quickly accepted the friendly hand extended by Congress party led by Sonia Gandhi in the 2004 general elections. The TRS won 26 assembly seats and five Lok Sabha seats and joined the UPA government at the Centre and the Congress government in the state.
In the very first address of joint session of Parliament, the TRS forced incorporation of a sentence in the address of the President to the joint session of Parliament on granting statehood to Telangana through a process of consultation and consensus. KCR became the Union minister for labour in the Manmohan Singh Cabinet.
However, the TRS did not remain content with what it had achieved. KCR continued to put pressure on the UPA government on granting statehood to Telangana and when nothing materialised even after two years, KCR pulled the TRS out of the UPA for failing to decide on Telangana statehood. KCR quit the Singh Cabinet at the Centre and his ministers from Y S Rajasekhar Reddy Cabinet in the state.
He resigned from his Lok Sabha membership and forced a by-election in his Karimnagar LS constituency, which he had won with a massive majority in September 2016. Again in April 2008, he made all his MLAs and MPs resign from their seats and contest the by-elections so as to prove the strong Telangana sentiment among the people.
Though the TRS suffered setbacks in 2009 general elections, it bounced back in 2010 by-elections, necessitated by the resignation of all its MLAs.
“KCR used elections as a strategy to sustain the Telangana movement, apart from making his party cadres hit the streets with a series of agitations,” observed veteran journalist K Ramachandra Murthy, who was also former advisor to Andhra Pradesh government on public policy.
In fact, Murthy said, the TRS would not have reached his goal of achieving statehood to Telangana, had Y S Rajasekhar Reddy not met with fatal helicopter accident in September 2009.
“As long as YSR was alive, he had put his foot firmly down in separating Telangana from Andhra Pradesh. After his death, KCR revived his movement in November 2009 by undertaking fast-unto-death, that forced the UPA to announce the commencement of process for separate Telangana,” he said.
In the next two years, Telangana was like a boiling cauldron with a spate of suicides by Telangana activists demanding separate statehood. Apart from TRS, several other political parties including the CPI, BJP and the Congress, besides state government employees, teachers and workers of various PSUs joined the agitation and fought under the umbrella of Telangana Joint Action Committee (TJAC) headed by Osmania University professor M Kodandaram.
“In fact, it was TJAC, rather than TRS, which spearheaded the movement for separate statehood. The credit should go to Kodandaram,” said Murthy.
Ultimately, the UPA government announced the formation of Telangana state and in February 2014, the AP Reorganisation Bill was passed in Parliament amidst an unprecedented pandemonium.
POST-TELANGANA ERA
Though it was the Congress which granted statehood to Telangana, the TRS, being the political front of the Telangana movement, walked away with the credit. KCR initially proposed to merge the TRS with the Congress but later went back on the move and contested the first assembly elections to Telangana in April 2014. The TRS won 63 out of 119 assembly seats in Telangana and KCR became the first chief minister.
After achieving Telangana, the TRS lost its image of being a mass organisation and turned into an out-and-out political party. He began decimating the opposition parties by encouraging defection of their MLAs into the TRS in the name of polarisation of political forces.
“In the last seven years, the TRS government has taken up several developmental programmes like Kaleshwaram, Mission Kakatiya and Mission Bhagiratha and welfare schemes like Rythu Bandhu. It was able to sustain and even improve the brand image of Hyderabad. But at the same time, KCR has become inaccessible to the common man and has been ruling from his fort-like bungalow, a character of typical feudal lord,” Murthy said.
All India Congress Committee official spokesman Dasoju Sravan said there was no doubt that TRS had played a big role in Telangana state becoming a reality, but there were various other factors that led to the formation of the state. “It was Sonia Gandhi who should be thanked for granting statehood to Telangana, as she understood the aspirations of the people,” he said.
Sravan said after coming to power, KCR failed to ensure a sustainable development of the state due to his lopsided priorities. “The state had plunged into a debt trap, corruption is all pervading and unemployment has reached its peak due to autocratic governance of the TRS chief,” he alleged.
Former Bharatiya Janata Party Telangana unit president and party’s national president of OBC Morcha Dr K Laxman said the TRS had lost its character of an organisation that led a massive movement before 2014 and had turned into a typical autocratic regional party dominated by a single family of KCR.
“The aspirations of the people who took part in the movement have not been fulfilled after the TRS came to power. They continue to suffer as they were during the combined Andhra regime,” he observed.
The TRS has also earned the notoriety of being a family party with KCR’s son K T Rama Rao, daughter K Kavitha and nephews T Harish Rao and J Santosh Kumar dominating the party and the government. “Nobody dares to question KCR’s authority and those who raised any voice like former health minister Eatala Rajender, they would be hounded out,” political analyst Suresh Dharur said.
As of now, the TRS has been more or less an invincible and formidable political party in Telangana, except for an occasional setback as had happened in 2019 general elections in which the BJP won four Lok Sabha seats and Congress three.
“The TRS has been able to win the elections due to lack of strong opposition. There is no powerful leader who can match up to the stature of KCR,” Dharur observed.
It would be interesting to see whether the Telangana Congress under the leadership of firebrand leader A Revanth Reddy and the BJP led by MP Bandi Sanjay could emerge as a potential alternative to the TRS in the next elections.
