HYDERABAD: After losing its footing for being an “anti-Telangana” party in the state, can the Telugu Desam regain its ground in Telangana while holding power in Andhra Pradesh? The answer lies at the centre of the city —New MLA Quarters in Jubilee Hills _ where the TDP was founded, says L Ramana, Telangana TDP president.
“The NTR Bhavan at the centre of the city is an example of where TDP’s roots lie. The then TDP government created the Cyberabad region and boosted the service sector, the fruits of which are still available. Our base is here,” he said in during an interaction with the editorial team of The New Indian Express.
Apprehensions are aplenty about TDP reclaiming its hold on the ‘settlers’ community, especially after its prime faces have switched loyalties to the TRS but Ramana is undeterred and is confident that TDP’s loyal ‘soldiers’ would bring the party to power. “If you look at the Pragathi Nivedana Sabha, only about 5 lakh persons of the expected crowd of 25 lakh turned up. It means that the governance of TRS gets only 20 per cent marks. The less said about the government’s promise to turn Khammam into another New York the better,” he remarked.
“The leaders who had left us cannot wean our voters away from voting for us. We are sure that our army of eight lakh soldiers will lead us to power in the upcoming elections.”It may be mentioned here that Kukatpally and Quthbullapur constituencies in the city have large chunks of the population of settlers from Andhra Pradesh and the two MLAs from there defected to the ruling party soon after the TRS was elected to power in 2014.
The Telangana TDP will be at a disadvantage when it comes to campaigning as the culture, language, dialect and accent are quite different from those of Andhra leaders. This difference will become clearly visible and come into play when party supremo N Chandrababu Naidu will take up campaigning for the party in the coming months.
“Native culture and dialect worked to TRS’ advantage in the elections held in 2014 even before the embers of the statehood agitation died. The heat generated by the movement will be missing in 2019,” observed Ramana. The Telangana sentiment will not work now as the state has already come into being and the TRS government’s governance will be put to test by people. As for the TDP, we have several programmes being conducted from the mandal to the state level. It is pertinent to remember that we won 15 seats in the 2014 elections,” he said.
‘A Rs 2 lakh crore budget for state’
The TDP dreams of a Rs 2 lakh crore annual budget for the state the 2019-20 financial year if it is elected to power. “A whopping amount of Rs 25,000 crore will be allocated only for the welfare of farmers. The next priority will be to make the Bayyaram steel project materialise. Besides, the Andhra Pradesh model of employment generation will be replicated in Telangana,” Ramana said.