Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) president and former Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, who was considered a “divine force” of Telangana, is now facing a rejection within his own party.
Though his family members – including his son K T Rama Rao, daughter Kavitha, nephew T Harish Rao and close relative B Vinod Kumar have been still trying to give KCR a larger than life size image, the other party leaders and cadre seem to have lost faith in him.
Of course, there is another group of leaders – like Balka Suman, Kadiyam Srihari, G Jagadish Reddy, Palla Rajeshwar Reddy and S Niranjan Reddy, who formed a coterie around KCR and praising his government.
But many other seniors, including MPs and MLAs, besides former MLAs, have stopped visiting Telangana Bhavan or KCR’s residence; and are looking up to the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party for better future.
Yet, KCR is still trying make his party leaders and cadre believe that he is the superman of Telangana and the people still have a lot of reverence towards him; and wanted him to become the chief minister for a third successive term.
“The BRS has faced a debacle in the recent assembly elections by a thin margin of 1.8 percent of votes, because of anti-incumbency against the local MLAs. The people wanted to see me as the chief minister again, but they voted against the local MLAs. We knew it a couple of weeks before the elections, but we had no time to change the candidates,” he said.
The BRS leaders are not buying his argument. A former BRS MLA recalled the statement of KCR before the elections that the people would vote for KCR and not the MLAs.
“He even announced in public that the people should vote for BRS, considering that it’s KCR who is contesting in all the 119 seats,” he pointed out.
Another BRS leader said if what KCR was saying – that the people wanted him to come back to power – is true, he should have won in Kamareddy constituency also.
“Why did KCR lose in Kamareddy and why his majority came down in Gajwel, which he claims has developed a lot?” he asked.
That KCR is very desperate to win the confidence of his own party people was evident from his statement that the Congress government would collapse in another five or six months and the BRS would come back to power.
“This is nothing but a wishful thinking of KCR, only to placate his own party cadre. At a time when the BRS MLAs are looking for defecting into the Congress, one wonders how he can expect the Congress to lose power and the BRS, which has only 39 MLAs, to come to power?” an analyst asked.
