T R S GAMBLE

By Syed Amin Jafri

Monday was a day of swift and dramatic developments. The final break betwe-en the Congress and Telangana Rashtra Samiti came when, in a unilateral action, five TRS ministers pulled out from the first coalition government led by Dr Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy in Andhra Pradesh. More significantly, the sixth TRS minister S. Santosh Reddy, an ex-Congressman, raised a banner of revolt against the TRS leadership and refused to resign. More dissensions are likely to be witnessed in the TRS with some more legislators queering the pitch for party boss K. Chandrasekhar Rao.

Though relations between the two partners were estranged for some time now and a war of words was on between them, the TRS withdrawal from the State Cabinet has come faster than expected. In fact, the hostile attitude of the Chief Minister was evident in abundance when he summarily rejected the concerns of TRS leaders regarding Pulichintala and Polavaram irrigation projects which are meant to benefit coastal Andhra. His administration also goofed up on his promise to tap waters of the Pranahita river for Telangana.

These could be the factors that contributed to the mistrust of TRS leaders. On the issue of separate Telangana, the views of Dr Rajasekhar Reddy were no different from his Telugu Desam predecessor N. Chandrababu Naidu. An integrationist at heart, Dr Reddy harped on the need for constituting a second States Reorganisation Commission to go into the demand for Telangana as a ‘dilatory’ tactic.

Whereas Mr Naidu openly favoured a Samaikhya Andhra Pradesh. The stand of both these leaders from Rayalaseema was resented by the TRS leadership, with Mr Chandrasekhar Rao and Mr A. Narendra lashing out at them frequently. Mr Chandrasekhar Rao insisted that there would be no second SRC since the Congress-led UPA had given an unequivocal commitment to fo-rm a separate Telangana State.

Also, TRS and Congress leaders had developed serious differences on the Naxalite issue. Before the Assembly polls, the Congress had promised to end the “bullet for bullet” policy pursued by the TD vis-à-vis the Naxalites and launch a peace initiative to resolve this longstanding problem. The TRS had promised to work to lift the ban on the People’s War Group. The Congress and TRS entered a poll alliance for the Assembly and Lok Sabha polls on the understanding that they would work for the creation of a separate Telangana. The Naxals supported their alliance in the polls.

The Congress stormed into power in the State and the TRS also gained significance in Telangana winning five Lok Sabha and 26 Assembly seats. The TRS joined the Union Cabinet and the State ministry with two ministers at the Centre and six in the State. This was the time when dissension between the electoral partners arose. Some Congressmen resented the Cabinet berths for the TRS while the party leaders from coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema resisted the separate Telangana demand.

In the meantime, the Rajasekhar Reddy regime initiated the peace process with the Naxalites by agreeing to a ceasefire. The government lifted the ban on the PWG in July 2004 and the first round of peace talks were held with PWG and Janashakti leaders in the city in October 2004. The Congress had second thoughts on the peace talks for two reasons. One was the merger of the PWG and the MCCI of Bihar to form the CPI-Maoist. The other was the attempt by the Maoists to expand their base into coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema and augment their strength through huge collections of party funds, acquisition of modern weapons and equipment and recruitment of cadres.

The peace initiative crumbled and combing operations were launched in a big way to counter Naxal violence in January 2005. Thereafter, the Maoists and Jan-ashakti Naxalites began mounting their pressure on TRS and Congress leaders at the local level to prevail upon the government to resume the peace talks. As encounters occurred with monotonous frequency, the Maoists set a deadline for TRS to sever ties with the Congress and pull out of the Congress-led ministries at the Centre and in the State. Mr Chandrasekhar Rao sought to placate the Maoi-sts by urging them to kill him and spare his partymen.

About 500 local level elected functionaries of the TRS quit their posts, bowing to Maoist diktat. As relations soured with the TRS, veteran Congress leader G. Venkatswamy and senior minister M. Satyanarayana Rao mounted a tirade against Mr Chandrasekhar Rao and his men. Incidentally, both of them claimed to have played a role in forging the Congress-TRS alliance for the last year’s polls.

Mr Venkatswamy thought that if Mr Chandrasekhar Rao and Mr Narendra could be eased out of the Union Cabinet, the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh could induct senior Congressmen like him in the impending reshuffle. Mr Satyanarayana Rao, on the other hand, has no specific grouse against Mr Chandra-sekhar Rao, except that the latter was as much a loudmouth as him!
A one-time Telangana protagonist, Mr K. Keshava Rao changed his colours soon after his nomination as APCC president. He also began harping on the second SRC and joined issue with Mr Chandrasekhar Rao and Mr Narendra many a time. Other Telangana supporters among the Congress leaders and legislators also became lukewarm towards the TRS and separate Telangana as the loaves of power came their way.

So, this convinced the TRS leadership about the antagonistic attitude of the Congress towards its core demand for Telangana State. The return to lawlessness in Telangana with the resumption of police operations and Naxalite violence came as a cause of worry to the TRS which has been advocating a peaceful settlement on the issue to put a fullstop to the bloodshed in this region.
In this backdrop, the killing of Janashakti leader Riyaz in an ‘encounter’ in Karimnagar district last Friday after he was picked up by police in Hyderabad brought the uneasiness in TRS-Congress ties to a flashpoint. To add insult to injury, Dr Rajasekhar Reddy chided the TRS leaders for “their doublespeak” on the Naxalite issue.

“They tell me one thing but they say something else outside just to save their lives (from the extremists). There is no point talking about them” was his cryptic comment when the TRS ministers voiced their threat to quit the Cabinet if the encounter killings continued.
The alleged neglect of the interests of the backward Telangana region also caused heartburn to TRS leaders. They felt that the Rajasekhar Reddy regime was not sincere in implementing the Girglani Commission report on GO 610, which seeks repatriation of non-local government employees working in Telangana to their respective regions.

They also had apprehensions that Dr Rajasekhar Reddy was keen on completion of irrigation projects in coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema while paying lip sympathy for the Telangana region. They had misgivings that Dr Rajasekhar Reddy was seeking the inter-basin transfer of Godavari waters to Krishna river to help coastal belt.

So, water, jobs and peace were the issues that weighed with the TRS in determining the longevity of its ties with the Congress. All these factors cumulatively led to the dramatic pull-out of TRS ministers from the State Cabinet. Curiously, Mr Chandrasekhar Rao and Mr Narendra have not yet taken the decision to quit their Union posts and withdraw support to the UPA government. This emboldened Mr Santosh Reddy to defy Mr Chandrasekhar Rao’s diktat to leave the State Cabinet.

In a bid to quell the disquiet in the TRS camp, the Congress leadership in New Delhi has launched a fire-fighting operations to mollify Mr Chandrasekhar Rao. How long Mr Chandrasekhar Rao’s honey-moon with the Congress central leadership will last is anybody’s guess. The immediate impact of the TRS-Congress break-up will be felt in the municipal elections slated in September 2005 though the TRS pull-out from the government will not affect the stability of either the Dr Rajasekhar Reddy government or the Dr Manmohan Singh government.