KCR’s mysterious Delhi trips
It is no secret that Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao nurses national ambitions, but it is not clear how he intends to achieve them. After waxing eloquent in Hyderabad that he would lead the farmers’ agitation at the national level, implying that he was trying to renew his efforts to craft a political coalition that would emerge as an alternative to the BJP, the Telangana strongman left for Delhi on Sunday and stayed put there for four days.
Before leaving and soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced his decision to repeal the contentious farm laws, the CM announced Rs 3 lakh ex-gratia to each of the farmers who had died during their 13-month-long agitation. By doing so, he faced flak at home that he did not bother about the plight of the kin of the cultivators who had died by suicide in Telangana but was more concerned about projecting himself as the messiah of farmers at the national level.
Before he left for Delhi, KCR, taking everyone by surprise, sat in a dharna in Hyderabad that was meant to put pressure on the Centre to procure Telangana paddy and slammed the BJP for the agriculture-related ills that plagued the country. He spoke at length about how successive governments had failed to tap the full potential of rivers in providing irrigation facilities to parched lands and vowed to fight the Bill that sought to fix meters to agriculture pumpsets. He had said that he would join hands with farmers in the fight for a legislation that guaranteed minimum support price.
After reaching Delhi, he remained indoors. Though West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was in Delhi, he did not call on her. On Wednesday, he returned to Hyderabad, leaving everyone wondering as to what he had accomplished with his trip. In the present Lok Sabha, the TRS has nine MPs, along with one MIM member who is his ally. Even assuming that he improves his party’s tally, it remains to be seen how he could become the fulcrum of an anti-BJP coalition.