Hyderabad, November 15: What ’s KCR up to? Political circles are abuzz with this question ever since the TRS chief made a statement last week offering support to the Congress. Coming just a month and a half ahead of the Dec 31 deadline for the Srikrishna Committee’s report on the Telangana issue, his olive branch to the Congress is being seen as a sellout by his critics in the Telangana movement and as only an opportunistic stratagem by his supporters.
The more vocal of KCR’s critics are now asking the question: Is KCR Channa Reddy II? The allusion is to Marri Channa Reddy, the leader of the 1969 Telangana movement who abandoned it in 1970 and went on to become chief minister of the united AP state years later.
Questions relating to KCR’s real intentions began to be asked even after his party trumped all comers in the July byelections in Telangana. It naturally led everyone to think that KCR, armed with that massive mandate, would now go for broke on Telangana.
But Chandrasekhar Rao began talking diplomatese, saying that since the Srikrishna Committee would submit its report by Dec. 31, why hurry? In the first flush of that victory, KCR turned his attention to taking advantage of the parlous state of the TDP. He fashioned a new strategy for his party: eat up the TDP.
He launched defection jamborees in the Teangana districts where TDP leaders joined his party in droves.
TDP leaders and his critics noticed that he was not similiarly aggressive vis a vis the Congress. For one thing, KCR said nothing to embarrass chief minister K Rosaiah and instead trained his wit on the TDP. KCR critics point out that by targeting the TDP, KCR was working in concert with the Congress, in whose interest it is to decimate the TDP.
There have been other deeds of KCR that have had non-political Telangana supporters raise their eybrows. One fine day, he declared his love for Lagadapati Rajagopal, enemy no. 1 in the eyes of Telangana separatists.
TRS leaders put a spin on Rao’s love for Rajagopal and his integrationist statement on the nativity issue. They say this was quite in the interests of the TRS. Rao was only trying to placate settlers in Telangana and win them to his side. But all the same, the statement sent mixed signals.
Then came the demand for declaring Sept.
17 as Telangana Liberation Day. Come the day, Chandrasekhar Rao was nowhere to be seen, not wanting to offend any of the interests within the T movement. A month later, TRS declared that Nov. 1, AP Formation Day, would be observed as Telangana Betrayal Bay. But again KCR made no mark on the day.
Some token protests were held here and there and that was that. To his critics it appeared as if KCR was not all that exercised about making a telling point about Telangana.
The came the Batukamma peccadillo by KCR’s daughter Kavitha. Her grand plans for a ‘Koti Batukammala Jatara’ ran into opposition from within the Telanagana movement, with Dalit sections questioning the wisdom of organising such a festival, which they said was a festival of landlords, in a year in which more than 600 young people had died for the Telangana cause.
The hue and cry was just another instance of fissures within the movement coming to light.
Again, when spontaneous protests arose in support of reservation of the government pleaders’ jobs for Telangana advocates, the TRS was caught napping. Only after the lawyers were up in arms against the government, did Kavitha go to the High Court to express solidarity with the T lawyers. KCR did visit the protest camp but the questions had already arisen.
Though the TRS vehemently denies diluting the movement, doubts have begun to be expressed over KCR’s ultimate objective. His conference with CEOs to allay fears of industry about conditions in a future Telangana state came in for severe criticism too.
He was flayed for ‘ganging up’ with the capitalist class. His son K T Rama Rao’s assertion that there was nothing wrong in having business deals with Andhra industrialists and finally Kavitha turning up at a mahurat function for a film being produced by D Ramanaidu, have served as further grist to this mill.
–Agencies