Hyderabad: TRS supremo and the prime minister of Telangana, K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) leave no stone unturned for the upcoming by-election in Huzurabad. First, it was the Dalit Bandhu scheme (under which the beneficiaries amount to R10 million), and Wednesday’s announcement of Gellu Srinivas Yadav as the TRS candidate for the poll shows quite a bit that KCR does not want to leave a stone unturned.
The fact that the ruling TRS is in front of a former party member and former minister of the state cabinet, Eatala Rajender, who now stands with the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), means that KCR does not want to take any chances. Gellu Srinivas Yadav, the candidate, is a former student leader of Osmania University. He was a Ph.D. holder and has been associated with the TRS for many years and was also active during the Telangana state movement.
More importantly, through a government scheme that helps Dalits financially and a candidate for backward classes (BC), the ruling TRS mainly gets the votes of both communities that make up a large part of the voting share in the seat of Huzurabad. “Congress will do anything to win the TRS. And it’s not like Dubbaka. “Through Srinivas Yadav, we will ensure that we also get the most BC votes,” said a TRS leader who requested anonymity.
The TRS candidate makes a big difference this time around, as Eatala Rajender, who has won the seat four times, is also a member of the BC community. In Telangana, it is believed that more than 50% of the population comes from the backward classes, which is one reason why BC is always important to all political parties in the state. Unlike SC / ST (Dalit / Tribal) communities, however, the backward class block is also divided internally between different communities.
In the forthcoming poll, the TRS will clearly benefit after winning the by-election in Nagarjunasagar earlier this year. For Eatala and KCR, it will also be a prestige issue, as they used to be a weapons comrade that fought for a separate Telangana for more than a decade.
KCR vs Eatala
Earlier in June, Eatala Rajender finally announced his retirement from the TRS (of which he was a founding member) and the state assembly. Eventually he joined the BJP. Eatala was earlier removed from the state cabinet by the KCR, after which an investigation was launched against him over allegations of land grabbing. But long before that, he questioned the leadership of KCR, suggesting that things were not going well with the TRS and its senior leaders.
More importantly, through Eatala, the BJP is also looking for interventions in constituencies where it does not even drop, despite the claim to the main opposition in Telangana. In the 2018 Telangana Assembly polls, Rajender received 1,04469 votes, while congressional candidate P. Kaushik Reddy received 60,604 votes. The BJP’s Raghu Puppala received only 1670 votes. During the 2018 state elections, the BJP also won just one out of 119 seats.
As things stand now, Kaushik Reddy, who was in a good position to even win the seat in Huzurabad, crossed over from the TRS side a few weeks ago. This was something that political experts expected. Kaushik, who may have expected to get a TRS ticket, is now housed in the state legislature. We need to see who the congress is now as a candidate.
The TRS was on its back last year after the losses to the BJP in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) polls and the double by-poll last year. However, the saffron party failed to perform as it was most important: in the recent by-election in Nagarjunasagar. The saffron party candidate can get just over 7,000 votes. Nomula Bhagat of TRS won by more than 80,0000 votes, while congressional candidate and veteran leader Jana Reddy received more than 70,000 votes.
Source: The Siasat Daily