It's Time TRS Learns Lessons, Revives Connect With People

Party leadership needs to adopt a more democratic approach to counter BJP

- CH V M Krishna Rao

Two years into its second term in office, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) will now have to go back to the drawing board and redraw its strategies, for, it is forced for the first time to contend with, not a weakened Congress or the decimated Telugu Desam, but a real opposition party in the BJP. In other words, the game has just begun for the 2023 elections.

The fractured verdict thrown up in the keenly fought Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) election is being seen as a reflection of public resentment over the style of functioning of the TRS leadership, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao included. The underlying message of the results, even TRS insiders confide, is that people expect those in power to be humble, however, benevolent they might be. In fact, the party had received enough warning signs in the past but failed to sense any, thus paving the way for the sudden ascendancy of the BJP in a manner that few expected.