TRS leaves no stone unturned for biggest ever show of strength

Ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti had pulled out all the stops to make its biggest ever show of strength on Sunday a grand success as arrangements were being made at an unprecedented scale for the "Pragati Nivedana Sabha". Hundreds of labourers and party workers were busy round the clock to prepare at 2000 acres area at Kangra Kalan village adjacent to the Outer Ring Road near Hyderabad.

The party estimates that about 2.5 million people will attend the meeting where the Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao will present a report of the performance of his Government over the last four years and sound the begul for the next elections. The massive arrangements include deployment of about 1,00,000 vehicles of al sizes and shapes to ferry the people from all the 31 districts. As 7,000 buses of the State road transport corporation and the private organisations were also hired by the party TRS MP K Kavitha has asked the people to postpone their plans for any long distance travel on Sunday. The huge mobilisation of people was likely to bring the normal life to standstill in the State Capital and its surroundings as lakhs of people will be passing through the Outer ring road around the city. From the city itself the party was expecting about half a million people to attend the public meeting. The police have identified seven different routes for the meeting bound traffic. The vehicles coming from all parts of the state will be directed on to the ORR and later to the service roads linking the venue to the ORR.

The scale of the arrangements could be gushed by the fact that 25 lakh bottles of drinking water were ordered by the party and the massive Dias will accommodate 1500 people. Arrangements were made for parking if vehicles on area or more than thousand acres. TRS leaders said that the all the expenses of the meeting will be borne by the party. However the food for the participants coming from far off laces will be arranged by the local MLAs and other local leaders. Each of the 119 assembly constituencies in the State were given a target of sending 15,000 to 25,000 people to the meeting. A division bench of Hyderabad High Court on Friday dismissed a petition of an advocate and environmental activist Pujari Sridhar seeking to stop the TRS meeting on the ground that it will cause inconvenience to the people and damage the environment as trees were being cut to prepare the venue.

Hoping that the sheer size of the gathering and the scale of show of strength will outwit the opposition entire TRS machinery has gone out of the way to put everything in place for the meeting.

A helipad was also being prepared at the venue for KCR to reach the place. While KCR visited once to see the preparations his son and senior minister K Taraka Rama Rao, daughter and MP K Kavitha, two deputy Chief Ministers, entire cabinet and Hyderabad Mayor had thrown themselves for fool proof arrangements.  The arrangements also include four mini hospitals with 50 doctors and as many ambulances, four cell phone towers and 80 transformers.

The previous record of biggest show of strength by the TRS was a million strong rally in Warangal at the peak of the movement for separate Telangana.The meeting was being held amid the speculations of KCR planning to go for an early elections to the state assembly possibly along with four other states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram around December. The election to the state assembly in normal course was due in April-may next year.

However reports suggest that the Election commission's unwillingness to go for early elections in Telangana was likely to throw a spanner in the plans of KCR.