A Flashy Head Start

The Telangana CM wrests first-mover advantage by advancing the state assembly polls by eight months.

- Amarnath K. Menon

 

Ever since he founded the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) in 2001, Kalvakuntala Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR), 64, has never completed a full five-year tenure from any constituency, whether as an MLA or as an MP. Neither have any of the 108 others elected as TRS MLAs. As an imperious leader, banking on a mix of astrology, numerology and vaastu besides realpolitik, KCR has engineered elections ahead of time, staving off challenges and successfully staying ahead of rivals.

That characteristic belligerence was again on display on September 6. The chief minister got the state cabinet to recommend the dissolution of the first 119-seat Telangana legislative assembly, eight months ahead of schedule, and then had Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan call for an early election. Telangana, therefore, will have assembly polls with Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram, which complete their full term. With this move, KCR has given himself the first-mover advantage, catching rivals unawares and underprepared, while he hopes to cash in on the development narrative of the state.

Taking the offensive as well as the initiative, he derided Rahul Gandhi as “the biggest buffoon in the country” and described the Congress as Telangana’s ‘biggest enemy, curse and misfortune’, accusing it of indulging in ‘unlimited idiocy’. “Telangana state can ill afford the political fragility that opposition parties were seeking to introduce, particularly when the state was making rapid progress,” KCR said. Under the circumstances, the best course of action was to go back to the people and seek a reaffirmation of the mandate to continue the work that put Telangana on top of all the states in terms of economic growth and public welfare. Hence the advancing of the assembly poll.