HYDERABAD: After dropping more than enough hints on Friday about early polls to the state Assembly, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao arrived in Delhi to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
However, the state government has gone into an ‘election mode’ has become clear after the Chief Minister showered sops on priests, Imams, transferred IAS and IPS officers and three IAS officers, holding key posts being given new postings. The Chief Minister also filled three nominated posts.
With a ‘triple action’ Thursday wherein Rao met Governor ESL Narasimhan and held confabulations while his son and Minister KT Rama Rao stay put in Delhi and met some ‘key people’ and the advisor to TS government Rajiv Sharma meeting Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa, Friday saw a flurry of activity which clearly indicated that the government was indeed in the election mode. Sources say that polls could be held as early as December.
On the party front, Rao held a detailed meeting with party MPs, MLAs and MLCs at Telangana Bhavan on Friday. As expected, all the elected representatives authorised Rao to take a decision on the polls. Rao told them that he would take a final decision soon.
A visibly confident Rao told the party leaders that the TRS was going to win 100 seats whenever Assembly elections are held. Quoting his own surveys, he told them that the margin between TRS and the Opposition was narrow only in 10 of the 119 Assembly constituencies. In the remaining places, TRS was way ahead of others and beyond their reach, he is said to have remarked.
However, the main focus at Friday’s TRS Legislature and Parliamentary Party meeting was on making Pragathi Nivedana Sabha a grand success. Rao asked the party MLAs to mobilise around 25,000 people from each constituency. The party is expecting to mobilise 27 lakh people for the mammoth public meeting on the city outskirts on September 2 when Rao will sound the poll bugle.
Chances of early polls clear: Uttam
With the sudden political developments, TPCC president N Uttam Kumar Reddy hurriedly convened a teleconference with party booth committee leaders. “The chances of early polls are clear if one goes by the political atmosphere in the state,” he said.
Organising mammoth public meetings is nothing new for the Telangana Rashtra Samithi and it is the pink party’s supremo and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao who goes into every minute detail, instead of completely leaving it to his deputies, as far as the arrangements for the massive public meetings are concerned.
Interestingly, Rao, a superb orator, himself gives catchy names to each public meeting held so far which draw people from all corner of the state. This time it is ‘Pragathi Nivedana’. In the past, he had coined names like ‘Simha Garjana’, ‘Warangal Jaitra Yatra’ and ‘Jana Garjna’ for the public meetings held by TRS.
On September 2, the TRS is going to organise yet another mammoth public meeting which is likely to see the participation of several lakhs of people from all over the state. The pink party expects a turnout of around 25 lakh people _ perhaps the biggest event so far. The meeting will be held at Kongarkalan village in Ibrahimpatnam on the city’s outskirts and Rao is personally monitoring each and every detail that is going into the mega show to make it a grand success. KCR, as is popularly called, inspected the arrangements at Kongarkalan on Friday and gave directions to the party workers on where the dais should be arranged and on the basic amenities to be provided to people.
He also asked party workers to lay 15 to 20 approach roads to the venue so that people from all directions of the state can reach the venue easily. The TRS will take the permission of the roads and buildings department for laying these new roads. “We will lay roads with TRS fund,” a party functionary said.
Right from its inception in 2001, the TRS has been known for organising mammoth public meetings which saw the participation of lakhs of people and yet were smooth affairs. ‘’This will be a very special event for TRS where the party supremo will present the TRS government’s report card before the people. The report card, we can say, will undoubtedly be very impressive,’’ a functionary said.
‘’The boss goes into the intricacies of all arrangements and asks us to make changes and that is the prime reason why mammoth meetings are so successful and hassle-free. There is no regional party which can match our preparations. Nationally, I think only the BJP can match us,’’ he said.