The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : Hour of reckoning for TRS today

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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

Hour of reckoning for TRS today

Special Correspondent

The party must win a minimum of 12 seats to prove a point or two

TRS may yield ground in few constituencies
Congress, TDP leaders make optimistic claims

HYDERABAD: The weighty question exercising the minds of political parties about who will win the byelections in Telangana will be answered well before 10 a.m. on Sunday, the time by which trends in all the constituencies are expected to be available.

The answer is sealed in the electronic voting machines after nearly 63 per cent of the electorate exercised its choice on Thursday. This is not an election that will decide the fate of the government nor will it lead to any major changes in the political spectrum.

Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy and APCC president D. Srinivas have been claiming all along that whether the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) wins or loses some of the seats, it will make no difference to the cause of separate Telangana. Yet, for its own political survival, the TRS’ performance must be more than impressive – winning at least three-fourths of the 16 seats it vacated “to teach Congress a lesson for betraying the Telangana cause”.

This means that the party must win a minimum of 12 seats to prove that all other issues, including the much-hyped development, have been swept aside by the Telangana sentiment. Also, it can show its ability to swing votes on its own without help from any other party, much less the Congress.

If the TRS does not achieve this stiff benchmark, it will have a lot of explaining to do. Going by the optimistic claims by Congress and the Telugu Desam leaders, the TRS will yield ground in at least a few constituencies.

In contrast, every seat won by the Telugu Desam will prove that the party’s vote base in all these constituencies is intact as it lost heavily in this region in 2004. With a robust organisation network, seasoned candidates and a vigorous campaign about misuse of welfare schemes, the TDP is tipped to wrest some of its erstwhile bastions from the TRS.

Nothing to lose

Banking heavily on the development slogan, the Congress improved its prospects by launching Rs. 2 a kilo rice scheme well before announcement of the election schedule. The Congress party has nothing to lose as it did not register a single victory in many of these seats ever since the launch of the TDP in 1982. But, securing a few seats will go a long way in helping the party to silence voices of dissent from senior leaders who predict the party’s rout unless it took a clear-cut decision on Telangana.

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