TRS pays for high-handedness
The beauty of democracy, as is often said, is it can humble leaders who consider themselves invincible and tend to take people for granted, living under the illusion that they are akin to kings of the past. The humiliating defeat for the ruling TRS by a margin of close to 24,000 votes in the just concluded bypoll to the Huzurabad Assembly constituency is yet another reminder of the realities that cronies would not let leaders see.
It all began with Eatala Rajender, a member of the KCR Cabinet, being stripped of his ministry on the grounds that he allegedly indulged in land irregularities. A hurriedly conducted inquiry completed within 24 hours told the world what KCR wanted to. Sensing further harassment, Rajender sought shelter in the BJP even as he quit as an MLA to prove his worth. And he did that almost six months later, during the course of which the ruling party played every trick in the book to ensure he didn’t return to the Assembly. Developmental works worth hundreds of crores were announced and some of them executed, Rs 10 lakh was promised to every Dalit family, and KCR even sought to make a turncoat Reddy leader from the same segment a member of the Legislative Council. A battery of ministers and party leaders camped in the constituency for months at the expense of attending to their normal duties and every voter was said to have been bribed in the range of Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000. Therefore, for top TRS leaders to now dismiss the bypoll as unimportant and the result as being of no consequence only amounts to being brave in the face of a shock.
Whether he likes it or not, KCR has none to blame but himself for whatever he did and the fallout of his actions. Any CM has the right to drop a minister but the manner in which the entire episode has been scripted reeked of arrogance. People do condone mistakes and failures of the government to honour promises but do not approve of high-handedness. The bypoll result is also perhaps an indication that KCR’s promises are no longer believed by people the way they used to earlier. The long-term adverse effects of the bypoll result on the TRS may be difficult to hazard at this point of time, but it will surely embolden critics of KCR within and outside the party