LS polls 2019: Chevella’s ‘kingmaker’ Konda Vishweshwar Reddy sure of victory

He further pointed a key difference between other earlier chief ministers and KCR.

HYDERABAD:  Nine of his party’s 21 MLAs may have defected to the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi, but Konda Vishweshwar Reddy’s confidence of his party’s victory in Chevella remains indomitable. Congress party’s Chevella candidate for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, Reddy justifies his confidence by recalling how he has seen a worse situation while representing the TRS during the 2014 elections, which according to Reddy, saw him turn into Chevella’s king-maker of sorts.

In a freewheeling chat with Express, Reddy claimed that this time in Chevella, the Congress is better placed that TRS was in 2014, when he managed to score a win from the same seat but on a TRS ticket. 
Reddy said, “The situation now is exactly the same as the last elections. In 2014, the TRS was poised to lose. It had no momentum and had no MLAs. TRS still managed to win two seats—Vikarabad and Tandur—in Assembly elections even though the candidates were not very well-known, (this was possible) because of me. This time the situation is better as the Congress has base votes here. Last time TRS had nothing but I still won.” 

Reddy’s confidence also stems from the fact that a large network of volunteers of Progressive Telangana Foundation, of which Reddy is a founder trustee, are spread in thousands of villages across the State, taking up various activities. “I won because of my team that is spread across all villages, called Progressive Telangana Foundation. The identity of this strong network goes (beyond) the party lines and this is how I was able to ensure Rohith Reddy’s victory from Tandur by defeating the second most powerful family in Telangana.” 

Coming to issues of priority for him, Reddy is clear—while he plans to raise the issues of lack of irrigation resources and unemployment in rural areas,  in urban areas it is pollution of lakes and dwindling economy. “Not a single job has been created in Rangareddy district. Apart from some IT jobs, there have been no major industrial jobs that would really benefit locals. All industries are going to neighbouring Andhra Pradesh like Kia motors and plants of cellphone manufacturers. Moreover, in the zonal system of government jobs, this area was under the Charminar zone, but they took us off of it and put us in the Jogulamba zone. We (could) not get a single drop of water with the Palamuru-Rangareddy irrigation scheme yet to be inaugurated.” 

He further pointed a key difference between other earlier chief ministers and KCR. “All CMs during united Andhra Pradesh were accused of ignoring development in the State, like Chandrababu Naidu, YSR and Kiran Kumar Reddy visited Vikarabad, Chevella, Pargi and Tandur but Telangana CM (K Chandrasekhar Rao), came here only for votes. What wrong did we do?”

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