National

Will voters succumb to Telangana sentiment?

HYDERABAD: On the heels of the Karnataka Assembly election, the fortunes of the Congress, among other parties, will be put to the test in Thursday’s byelections for 18 Assembly and four Lok Sabha seats in Andhra Pradesh.

It will, however, be a different ball game: the electors are not likely to choose a fresh dispensation or deliver a verdict that will be decisive for the Rajasekhara Reddy government’s survival. But, its performance will come under scrutiny.

The byelections happen to be Telangana-centric: all the constituencies, barring one in the coastal region, lie in Telangana.

These are elections that no one had wanted, not even the MPs and MLAs of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), who resigned at the instance of their president K. Chandrasekhar Rao. Parties across the political spectrum have blamed him for thrusting the byelections on the State less than a year before general election.

But the Telangana leader is unfazed. Admitting to having imposed the elections, he says his motive is to teach his erstwhile ally, the Congress, a lesson for its “betrayal” of the statehood cause.

Whether the mid-summer polls will have the intended effect is debatable. They have hardly enthused the political parties, the contestants, the government machinery, or the 92.5 lakh voters. Evidently, the TRS supremo wants to prove that the Telangana sentiment, based on the perceived injustice committed by leaders of the Andhra region, is alive and kicking.

It is this sentiment that he whipped up in 2006 by causing a byelection in the Karimnagar Lok Sabha constituency and winning it by a two-lakh margin. It helped him keep the Telangana pot boiling but neither it caused any tremor in New Delhi nor cemented his fragmented party.

A similar situation has been created now. The Congress feels it will make little difference to the Telangana cause even if the TRS walks away with a majority of the seats at stake. Ultimately, the statehood issue requires a political solution after a broad consensus among the major parties.

Mr. Rao has, nevertheless, succeeded in upsetting the carefully laid-out strategies of the Congress and the Telugu Desam for the next Lok Sabha election and shifted the focus to the Telangana issue.

Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy had hoped to garner votes by reviving N.T. Rama Rao’s scheme of supplying rice to the poor at Rs.2 a kg and offering loans at 3 per cent interest. Not to be outdone, Telugu Desam president N. Chandrababu Naidu shed the image of a champion of the liberal economy. In a game of competitive populism, Mr. Naidu promised gold ‘mangalasutras’ for young women at their wedding and loans at 1 per cent interest.

Unencumbered by any substantive economic issue, Mr. Rao is able to focus on his single-point agenda of a separate Telangana. Marshalling his skills of oratory and using local idiom and Telangana slang, he tries to drive home the point that Telangana can prosper only as a separate state.

As Chief Minister for four years, Dr. Reddy naturally harps on how he has contributed to the development of Andhra Pradesh by constructing dams, building houses for the poor, doling out pensions for the elderly and the infirm, and providing health insurance to poor families.

The TDP is banking on the anti-incumbency factor, the adverse fallout of inflation and his campaign against corruption in the Congress government.

At the end of the campaign, the voters will choose between the Congress’ development plank, the Telangana sentiment aroused by the TRS and the TDP’s appeal to vote out the incumbents. The Congress and the TDP are struggling to ward off pressure from within to adopt a more strident approach in favour of Telangana.

Mr. Naidu has climbed down, albeit slightly, from his time-tested stand favouring an integrated state. Congress dissidents have been silenced by the central leadership, but whether they will work for the victory of the official candidates is in doubt.

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