Ministerial berths, finance packages: What kept TRS away from Congress

The picnic is over even before it began. The Telangana Rashtra Samiti ruled out a merger with the Congress and virtually ruled out any pre-poll alliance with the party. TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao, after a general body meeting in Hyderabad, went hammer and tongs at the Congress and the UPA Government for giving a special status to the residuary state, claiming that the TRS will challenge this ‘undemocratic’ move in the Supreme Court. The bonhomie and the brotherhood that the TRS and the Congress leaders  from Telangana demonstrated immediately after the Telangana Bill was passed may have fooled the Congress into thinking of long-term alliances, but the TRS has been playing it safe all along. Even as thousands of hoardings and banners came up all over Hyderabad and Telangana districts, mainly by the Congress party eulogising Sonia Gandhi as Telangana Talli, TRS stuck completely to its pink shade, taking care not to give any indication that it is giving credit to the Congress party for the formation of the new state. “The TRS never really committed itself to any truck with the Congress. It is they who imagined it. Even in his meeting with Sonia Gandhi, TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao, only promised to consider an alliance. A merger was just a notion that some naive Congressmen floated around,” a senior leader from the TRS, who did not wish to be named, said. [caption id=“attachment_1418135” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] K Chandrashekhar Rao addressing a meeting of the TRS. PTI[/caption] “We now have complete support at the ground level. Why should we align with a party that has been seeing bad losses across the country? We can now win elections on our own steam,” he said. It was almost comical that the tone that KCR had adopted in launching a tirade against the UPA government was rather like one in the pre-Telangana formation days. He took the UPA government to task for letting down the people of Telangana, favouring Seemandhra by giving them various sops including a special status and giving seven mandals under the Polavaram project even before the formation process began. “We are now a full-fledged political party and will fight elections and form a government in Telangana,” KCR declared. Sulking and wounded, Congress leaders vowed to capture power in Telangana, sailing on the glory of created the T-state. “We may have thought for a moment that the merger would happen, but the Congress party does not need any minnow’s help. Besides, the TRS will now start selling seats and will mess up its chances. My estimation is that they won’t win more than 30-35 seats and there will be a khichdi government in Telangana,” a Congress leader said. The BJP, meanwhile, is happy with the way things are progressing, as the TRS seems to have taken its proposal to contest alone and then align with it post-polls seriously. BJP leaders predict that the TRS will definitely join hands with them once the elections are over as the party was already promised that post-poll, if the NDA comes to power, Narendra Modi will show special love to Telangana with financial packages and a few cabinet berths thrown in for the TRS. The political turmoil that beleaguered Andhra Pradesh now continues even after separation. As poll equations become increasingly fluid with each passing day, people of both states wait to deliver a resounding verdict on the parties that played with their destinies in Parliament and in political corridors, unmindful of ground perceptions and priorities.