REDDY, STEADY GO

BRUISED IN THE NORTH, A RESILIENT CONGRESS BOUNCES BACK IN TELANGANA, HANDING THE ONCE INVINCIBLE KCR A SOUND BEATING. BEHIND THE VICTORY WAS A FAULTLESS POLL STRATEGY

- AMARNATH K. MENON

Riding a crescendo of anti-incumbency against two-term chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao and his party, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), the Congress mounted an aggressive charge. The campaign, orchestrated by poll strategist and newly-appointed All India Congress Committee member Sunil Kanugolu, turned the seething disaffection against BRS MLAS, KCR and his family into a mass demand for change in rural Telangana. Before this deeply felt need, KCR's promises of new development schemes and the old, emotive chestnut of statehood stood little chance. Goaded by Kanugolu and led by the firebrand state unit chief Anumula Revanth Reddy, the Congress fearlessly implemented structural changes. Some veterans were sidelined, fresh local talent was sought out and brought in as candidates, and infighting was curbed with a firm hand. Buoyed by the Congress win in Karnataka in May, Reddy and Kanugolu replicated the model of campaigning there-twin focus on welfare via its 'six guarantees' and merciless skewering of an allegedly corrupt BRS regime. It gave them a mandate that Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan and Kamal Nath in Madhya Pradesh were denied, primarily because they ignored the exhortations of the Congress national leadership to use Kanugolu's services. On December 7, Reddy was sworn in as the first Congress chief minister of Telangana.