Hyderabad, June 7
Smarting under poll debacle and growing dissensions, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi has plunged into a fresh crisis with a rebel leader demanding resignation of the party president K Chandrasekhar Rao.
“Instead of carrying forward the movement for separate Telangana state, Rao encouraged nepotism and family rule in the party. He has lost public confidence and should quit the party,” the president of the party’s Mahaboobnagar district unit Y Srinivas Reddy said.
Interestingly, Rao won the recent Lok Sabha election from Mahaboobnagar constituency. The rebel leader lashed out at the party founder president, saying he had converted the sub-regional party into a family fiefdom and his frequent policy flip-flops and “blackmail politics” had done irreparable damage to the party’s image.
The fresh bout of revolt came in the midst of preparations by some rebel leaders to float a new outfit to work for Telangana cause. The party MLC and former IFS officer K Dileep Kumar is leading the efforts to form a new, apolitical organisation.
The dissidents are of the view that Rao had strayed away from the goal of achieving statehood. “There is a steady degeneration in values. It is no more a movement driven by passion and commitment,” said Prakash who had quit as TRS general secretary last year.
The TRS, which hoped to play a key role in national politics on Telangana plank, came a cropper in the recent elections, managing to win just two Lok Sabha and 10 Assembly seats. It had contested nine Lok Sabha and 45 Assembly seats as part of the four-party opposition alliance comprising TDP, CPI and CPI (M). The backward region accounts for 17 LS and 119 Assembly seats.
Such was the humiliation that the party fared poorly even in the districts which are considered the hotbeds of Telangana movement. In five out of 10 districts in the region — Ranga Reddy, Hyderabad, Nalgonda, Khammam and Mahbubnagar — the party drew blank. It could get just one Assembly seat each in Medak, Warangal and Nizamabad districts, three in Adilabad and four in
Karimnagar.
