Hyderabad: TRS supremo and Telangana chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) is leaving no stone unturned for the upcoming Huzurabad by-election. First it was the Dalit Bandhu scheme (under which eligible beneficiaries get Rs. 10 lakh), and Wednesday’s announcement of Gellu Srinivas Yadav as the TRS candidate for the by-poll pretty much shows that KCR does not want to leave any stone unturned.
The fact that the ruling TRS will be facing an ex-party member and former state cabinet minister, Eatala Rajender, who is now 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 from Osmania University. A Ph.D holder, he has been associated with the TRS for many years and was also active during the Telangana statehood movement.
More importantly, through a government scheme that helps Dalits financially and a Backward Class (BC) candidate, the ruling TRS is primarily ensuing that it gets votes from both communities which form a major chunk of the vote share in the Huzurabad seat. “The Congress will do anything for the TRS to win. And this is not like Dubbaka. Through Srinivas Yadav, we will ensure that we also get most of the BC votes,” said a TRS leader, who requested anonymity.
The TRS candidate this time makes a big difference, given that Eatala Rajender, who has won the seat four times, is also a member of the BC community. In Telangana, over 50% of the population is believed to be from the Backward Classes, which is one reason why BC faces always important for all political parties in the state. However, unlike SC/ST (Dalit/Tribal) communities, the Backward Class block is also split internally among various communities.
In the upcoming by-poll, the TRS will clearly be at an advantage, after winning the Nagarjunasagar by-election earlier this year. For both Eatala and KCR, it will also be a prestige issue, given that they were once comrades in arms who fought for a separate Telangana for over a decade.
KCR vs Eatala
Earlier in June, Eatala Rajender finally announced his resignation from the TRS (of which he was a founding member) and the state Assembly. He eventually joined the BJP. Eatala had earlier been dropped by KCR from the state cabinet, after which an inquiry was set up against him over land grabbing allegations. But even much before that, he had questioned KCR’s leadership, indicating that all was not well in the TRS and its senior leaders.
More importantly, through Eatala, the BJP is also looking to make inroads into constituencies where it doesn’t even have pockets, in spite of claiming to the be main opposition in Telangana. In the 2018 Telangana Assembly polls, Rajender secured 104469 votes, with Congress candidate P. Kaushik Reddy getting 60604 votes. The BJP’s Raghu Puppala got a paltry 1670 votes. In 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 Huzurabad seat, switched sides to the TRS few weeks ago. It was something that political pundits expected. Kaushik, who was perhaps expecting to be given a TRS ticket, is now being accomodated into the state Legislative Council. It is to be seen who the Congress puts up as a candidate now.
The TRS was on the backfoot last year after back-to-back losses to the BJP in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) polls and Dubbaka by-poll last year. However, the saffron party failed to perform when it mattered most: In the recently held Nagarjunasagar by-election. The saffron party’s candidate could muster just over 7,000 votes. TRS’s Nomula Bhagat won with over 80,0000 votes, while Congress candidate and veteran leader Jana Reddy secured over 70,000 votes.