For grassroots feel, KCR to meet candidates tomorrow

HYDERABAD: To ascertain the people’s reaction to the partial manifesto announced by the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) a few days ago and to gauge the party position in the field, TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao will interact with 105 party candidates, whose names were already announced more than a month ago, on October 21.

This will be the first meeting of the CM with the candidates after the announcement of their candidature. In preparation of the meeting, Chandrasekhar Rao has been reviewing the party activities in the constituencies through telephone interaction with the candidates during the last few days, party sources said.

For the meeting to be held at Telangana Bhavan, the party has directed all the candidates to come with the details of their campaign covered, response from the people, names of the rebel leaders and their activities.

TRS had announced its partial manifesto for the forthcoming elections on Tuesday. They include Rs 3,016 a monthly allowance to unemployed youth, waiver of loan up to Rs One lakh and enhancement of investment subsidy to farmers under Rythu Bandhu scheme from Rs 8,000 per acre to Rs 10,000 acre a year.

The party president wants to know from the candidates the response from the people to the partial manifesto and make additions or modifications while finalizing the final manifesto for polls.

Party sources said many candidates have completed first round of the campaign in the past two months. The party had disbursed publicity material to the candidates immediately after the announcement of their candidature. Despite the party leadership making it clear that there would be no change in the candidates in the announced seats, many rebel candidates have not given up their hopes. Recently, the party suspended MLC Ramulu Naik and few leaders in other places on charges of anti party activities.

KCR is likely to guide the candidates on how to go about in the second phase of campaign and issues need to be highlighted and utilizing social media, which is considered to be powerful in spreading the message, and what needs to be done just before polling.