In Telangana, anti-incumbency against KCR blown out of proportion by opponents

Shubhadeep Choudhury

Hyderabad, November 21

K Annamalai, president of the BJP in Tamil Nadu, is one of those politicians who firmly believe that people vote to change government not out of any love for the party elected to power but to teach a lesson to the people at the helm of the previous government.

Annamalai, who is in Hyderabad to campaign for his party, said the K Chandrashekar Rao-led Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) government in Telangana had become extremely unpopular and people wanted to see the CM getting ousted from power and face probe for corruption.

“The question is who is going to benefit from the sentiment against Rao. I can confidently say that the BJP in Telangana now has the organisational strength to mobilise the anti-Rao votes in its kitty and offer a new model of government to the people of Telangana,” Annamalai said while talking to reporters here today. The anti-incumbency sentiment against Rao is also central to the poll strategy of the Congress in Telangana. Both Congress and the BJP, however, seem guilty of miscalculating the anti-incumbency factor against KCR. In his over nine-year tenure as CM, the corruption charges against his government and his alleged nepotism have not made him unpopular enough for people to oust him.

“KCR and his party are very strong in Telangana. People credit them state formation, and that is true,” a top executive working in one of the steel plants of the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh said. The observation is echoed by Somaiyya, who drives auto-rickshaw. “It is the BRS which is the party of the people of Telangana,” Somaiyya says.