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KCR plans next big BRS rally in Andhra Pradesh’s Visakhapatnam
BRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao initially looked at Guntur and Vijayawada before deciding to hold the party’s launch public meeting in Visakhapatnam, a party leader said
HYDERABAD: The Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) led by Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao plans to hold its next public meeting at Visakhapatnam, the port city of Andhra Pradesh, a senior party leader said after the party rally in Telangana’s Khammam on Wednesday.
Thota Chandrasekhar, a prominent Kapu leader who was recently appointed to lead the party’s Andhra Pradesh unit, told reporters on the sidelines of the Khammam rally that the party will soon organise another rally at Visakhapatnam to formally kickstart the party activities in Andhra Pradesh.
“The date, venue and time for the public rally will be announced soon,” said Chandrasekhar, a retired bureaucrat, who was associated with the Jana Sena Party till recently. He was appointed to head the BRS’s Andhra Pradesh unit on January 4 and entrusted with the responsibility to launch the BRS in Andhra Pradesh.
A BRS leader familiar with the development said it was originally proposed to set up the party’s state headquarters in Guntur or Vijayawada and hold the BRS’s first public meeting in Andhra in the same district. But K Chandrasekhar Rao, or KCR, later decided in favour of Visakhapatnam. “He is now contemplating setting up his party head office in Visakhapatnam,” the BRS leader said, requesting anonymity.
Political analyst Mallu Rajesh said there could be more than one reason behind KCR’s decision to choose Visakhapatnam. One, Visakhapatnam is a cosmopolitan city with a large number of migrant people from West Bengal, Odisha and Bihar.
“Secondly, it has a mixed caste composition – Velamas and Kapus, who he can attract. Thirdly, KCR once said he had ancestral roots in adjacent Vizianagaram district; so, he can easily kick up the sentiment,” added Mallu Rajesh who is based in Visakhapatnam.
KCR can also promise to develop Visakhapatnam, which is now being projected as the executive capital of Andhra, on all fronts on the lines of Hyderabad, the capital of Telangana. “He may promise to bring IT bigwigs from Hyderabad to set up their units in Visakhapatnam which has a huge potential for IT growth,” Rajesh said.
To be sure, KCR has repeatedly spoken against the effort to privatise state-run units such as the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant. Even at the Khammam rally, the BRS president opposed the plant’s privatisation and promised to block privatisation if the BRS is voted to power at the national level.
“His son K T Rama Rao also extended support to the agitation by the steel plant employees against privatisation. He even promised to visit the steel city to extend his solidarity with the striking workers,” Rajesh said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said KCR, who led the campaign to slice Andhra Pradesh in two to create a new state of Telangana in 2014, should first apologise to the people of Andhra. “AP has suffered because of the bifurcation and the subsequent issues that are yet to be resolved,” he said.
