Lately, the political temperature in Telangana is shooting up as the actions of Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao suggest that early polls to the state Assembly are on the cards, despite his assertions to the contrary. He has been changing gears very fast, sending a delegation of TRS ministers and MPs to New Delhi to put pressure on the Centre to procure rabi paddy from the state, announcing notifications for filling over 80,000 government jobs, hiring the services of poll strategist Prashant Kishor to know the pulse of the people and commissioning constituency-wise surveys.
Though the present Assembly has time till December next year, the chief minister does not seem interested in taking any chances. He seems determined to stymie any attempts by the BJP in making political gains with its Hindutva slogan and the trenchant attack on him for his “alliance” with the AIMIM and his “family rule”. At the same time, he wants to cut the Congress down to size by playing up the internecine quarrels that plague the grand old party.
Though TPCC president A Revanth Reddy can cast a spell on people with his fiery speeches, he has to take along with him a battery of senior Congress leaders who are not happy with him for bulldozing his way to the top position in June last year after joining the party in 2017.
KCR looks set on going in for snap polls to ensure both the Congress and BJP cannot hold long and sustained campaigns that could have a lasting impact on the voters. With the BJP romping home in four of the five states in the north, KCR does not want the saffron party to grow in strength in the state. KCR so far is several steps ahead of the two parties in the political chess game. At the moment, he is busy building an anti-BJP wave among the farmers, blaming the PM for the Centre’s refusal to procure rabi paddy from Telangana. Going forward, KCR might even sit in a dharna in Delhi to be seen as the messiah of farmers.