TELANGANA 'PINK PANTHERS' ON POLITICAL WARPATH

By M H Ahssan / Hyderabad

Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), a political party in Andhra Pradesh fighting to acquire Telangana from Andhra Pradesh map ismaking its impact on major political developments in state politics. The party supremo K Chandrasekhar Rao, polularly known as KCR, did not fetch power to his party, the TRS. He is not any where near that, either. The TRS remained a hanger-on either to the Congress or to the Telugu Desam-led coalition in two successive general elections. 


The party always banked on by-elections to show its strength and to keep its pot boiling. The circumstances that forced KCR to lend a tacit support to Nagam Janardhan Reddy in Nagarkurnool and the humiliating defeat the party tasted at the hands of the BJP in Mahabubnagar assembly constituency even in the by-elelctions jolted him.  Thus, the TRS realised that victory even in by-elections isn’t a cakewalk.

Amid this roller coaster political journey, KCR led his party with an unmatched alacrity and unparalled political dexterity. It’s twelve years on. TRS grew into a force to reckon with, yet it hasn’t fortified its position from being a fledgling toddler to an enthusiastic teenager raring to go.

Now the conglomerate of ‘pink panthers’ is all set to behave like adolescents. KCR retained his unquestioned grip over the party by getting elected for the seventh time in a row as the president of the TRS.

KCR steered the ‘car’ first as a taxi lending support to others. Now he wants to own it with no hooks. TRS legislator T Harish Rao made it clear that the party might be going it alone at the hustings so as to prove its strength among all the parts of Telangana.

Telangana as always been an independent idea, a political aspiration, an emotional sentiment and a cultural curiosity.

The agitation remained protracted for forty five years since 1969. Yet the movement led by the TRS is the most consistent of all. The toffee-nosed boss weathered a myriad political storms to in his long and chequered journey. Barring an election defeat in 1983 , KCR never lost an election he contested. He went upto the position a union minister being a regional satrap. No mean an achievement this.

With none to align with and beaten-track anti andhra slogan KCR wants to fish in the troubled waters in areas where his party is no so strong like Adilabad, Nalgonda, Khammam, Mahbubnagar, Ranga Reddy and Hyderabad. That leaves KCR’s affective political influence confined to the districts of Karimnagar, Medak, Nizamabad and Warangal. However, he wants to prove a point that his party’s influence is pervasive all across Telangana. He doesn’t want to depend on anybody except his most trusted Telangana sentiment.

KCR, who asserted that the Telangana would continue until the separate state is achieved, has now set his eyes on winning 100 out of 119 assembly seats and 15 out of 17 Lok Sabha seats in the region. He tells the people that a resounding victory with these numbers would bestow a politically decisive position on the party. Of course this target is like aiming for the sky. Would KCR’s party scale up to telephone wires is a conjecture of time.

Now he says eight MLAs and some MPs would join  his party to take the movement forward. The TRS is celebrating its anniversary amidst fanatical cadres, the aroma of Telangana chicken curry and mutton biryani wafting through the nostrils and the dancing Bacchus.