Telangana bypolls – KCR quits failed TRS జూన్ 3, 2008
Posted by bharath in Karimnagar, Telangana, Warangal, elections, politics.add a comment
TRS founder president KCR quits after party debacle in bypolls
Hyderabad, Jun 3 (PTI) The Telangana Rasthra Samithi (TRS) president K Chandrasekhar Rao today resigned from the party post owning moral responsibility for its drubbing in the just-concluded byelections.
KCR, as the Telangana party chief is known in political circles, sent his resignation letter to the party General Secretary T Madhusudanachary.
“He has asked the party executive committee to accept his resignation,” TRS sources said.
However, his resignation is unlikely to be accepted by the party.
KCR’s move came in the backdrop of the TRS’ poor showing in the May 29 by-polls which were caused by the en masse resignation of its MPs and MLAs in protest against the UPA government’s failure to grant statehood for Telangana.
The party managed to retain only seven out of 16 Assembly and two out of four Lok Sabha seats it had vacated.
The ruling Congress and the main opposition TDP wrested the remaining seats in an election that was widely seen as a referendum on the Telangana statehood issue.
The TRS, which went to the polls with a single point agenda of Telangana and hoped to capitalise on the statehood sentiment, failed to impress voters. (ఇంకా…)
People reject great promises with no action- TRS planned to fail జూన్ 3, 2008
Posted by bharath in In News, Telangana, elections, politics.add a comment
The results of the byelections for four Lok Sabha and 16 Assembly segments in Telangana region are a resounding slap for the Telangana Rashtra Samiti and its leader, Mr K. Chandrasekhara Rao. It was the TRS which forced the byelections through en masse resignations of its representatives. But the party was only able to win seven Assembly seats and two LS seats leaving the rest to the Congress and the Telugu Desam. Mr Rao himself scraped through from Karimnagar Lok Sabha constituency with a slender margin of around 16,000 votes. The TRS has nobody to blame for this debacle but itself. Complacency was writ large on its campaign. Mr Rao and his cohorts overestimated their hold over the region and underestimated the public ire over frequent elections over silly rows. With no second thoughts, Mr Rao fielded the same jaded faces, unmindful of voter fatigue. While the Congress and the Telugu Desam, which were not too keen on the polls, sweated it out on the campaign trail, Mr Rao and his men smirked as if they held the region in the palms of the hand. They felt that there was no need to strain their sinews and that the magical Telangana slogan would do the job. But it was not so.
The TRS candidates lost their deposits in Khairatabad and Vikarabad. In seven other constituencies, they came a poor third. The party was unable to score a single victory in five districts. The electoral debacle should at least teach Mr Rao to desist from knee-jerk decisions and not to take the people of the region for granted. On the other hand, the Congress and TD look more robust now, all thanks to Mr Rao. The Chief Minister, Dr Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy, did not take the polls lightly. He examined all electoral permutations and combinations, and toured all areas, trying to sell his development slogan in real earnest. His efforts paid off and the Congress was able to wrest five seats from the TRS and retain Khairatabad with an impressive victory margin.
Anti- SEZ Polepalli contestants win- People’s agenda heard జూన్ 3, 2008
Posted by Telangana Utsav in Mahabubnagar, Telangana, elections, politics.Tags: SEZ
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Polepally protesters sway poll outcome
P. Sainath
The farmers contesting the Jadcherla seat helped to defeat the sitting MLA.
— Photo: P. Sainath
The Jadcherla 13, of whom eight are seen in the picture, succeeded in lowering the votes of the main parties
They made history by standing as 13 independent candidates fighting the same Assembly seat but contesting for, not against, one another. They did it again on Sunday — by helping defeat the sitting Telangana Rashtra Samithi MLA, even as every one of them lost his or her own security deposit.
The 13 farmers contesting the Jadcherla seat in Telangana — who lost their lands to the Polepally Pharma Special Economic Zone — together drew a total of over 8,000 votes. That is, four times Congress candidate Mallu Ravi’s victory margin over the Telugu Desam Party’s Erra Sekhar.
The effort of these mainly Dalit, backward caste and Adivasi farmers — a protest to draw attention to their loss of land — torpedoed the sitting TRS MLA, Lakshma Reddy. He drew less than 21,000 votes and came third. Both his Congress and TDP rivals drew more than twice that number each.
As many as 350 families have lost all their land — some 969 acres — to the Pharma SEZ (The Hindu, May 26, 2008). But even if these families had three votes each, the Jadcherla 13 drew several times that number in sympathy. That is, there is clear evidence of a much wider sympathy for them. Not only did they lose their land, they got no compensation beyond a pittance per acre.
The land acquired by the government for the SEZ is adjacent to the national highway. It is also not far from the Shamshabad airport. Land rates in the region are thus well above Rs.20 lakh per acre. Often even higher than that. But the displaced farmers got sums ranging from Rs.18,000 to Rs.50,000 an acre, way below the prevailing market rates. (ఇంకా…)
Telangana byelections- KCR Pvt Ltd Out జూన్ 3, 2008
Posted by bharath in In News, Telangana, elections, politics.add a comment
TRS pays for KCR’s foibles – News Analysis
S. Nagesh Kumar
Party suffers steady erosion in its vote base, not to speak of electoral losses in the bypolls
HYDERABAD: The Telangana Rashtra Samiti has paid a heavy price for the gross political miscalculation of its president K. Chandrasekhar Rao in precipitating byelections and ending up on the losing side. It has suffered erosion in its vote base, not to speak of the loss of face by conceding nine of the 16 Assembly and two of the four Lok Sabha seats that it held earlier. In as many as eight Assembly constituencies, it stood a poor third and forfeited deposits in two. Such reverses are perhaps not new to the TRS, as its share of Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituencies (ZPTCs) fell from 84 in 2001 to 25 in 2006.
The TRS as a vehicle for achieving statehood for Telangana has been called into question by those like Congress Working Committee (CWC) member G. Venkataswamy, who were earlier espousing its cause.
In retrospect, Mr. Rao was confident that the TRS’ and his own popularity would swing the ‘Telangana sentiment’ in the party’s favour. So cocky was Mr. Rao that he dismissed with disdain APCC president D. Srinivas’ appeal not to field a candidate in Khairatabad Assembly constituency where the Congress had fielded the son of late P. Janardhan Reddy, who never missed highlighting Telangana-related issues.
Not stopping at that, the TRS president went on to make smug statements that Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy would be replaced as Chief Minister by the Congress high command within 15 days of the byelections and that Telangana was hanging like the proverbial Sword of Damocles over the latter’s head.
Cadre in confusion
However, ever since the byelection results started trickling in, Mr. Rao became incommunicado not only to the media but also everyone except those in his inner circle, plunging his party cadre in confusion. His son, K. Taraka Rama Rao, who is the party general secretary, did better when he stated that the party needed to introspect and find out where its calculations went wrong. Such soul-searching would indeed help the TRS since it has made no conscious effort to evolve an ideological plank, or even an economic and social agenda that can go hand-in-hand with the Telangana sentiment. (ఇంకా…)
