HYDERABAD: Populist schemes, improved electricity supply and nascent Telangana sentiment have given TRS chief K. Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) a spectacular victory in the 7 December Assembly elections. He not only improved his 2014 tally of seats from 63 to 88 out of the total 119, but also increased his vote share from around 34% to a little over 49%.
The Opposition Congress led Mahakutami, which dreamt of unseating KCR, had to put up with 21 seats (Congress 19 and TDP 2, while two other constituents, TJS and CPI drew a zero), and couldn’t retain their previous tally of 22 and 15 seats respectively. AIMIM retained its seven seats, but BJP ended up with one seat, losing four it won last time.
Several of Congress stalwarts and CM aspirants like K. Jana Reddy (Nagarjunasagar), Komatireddy Venkat Reddy (Nalgonda), D.K. Aruna (Gadwal), Ponnala Lakshmaiah (Jangaoan) and Damodara Raja Narsimha (Andole-SC) were defeated and TDP’s high profile candidates Nama Nageswara Rao (Khammam) and N. Suhasini (Kukatpally) lost the battle.
Congress, which got around 22% vote share last time, had aspired to come to power by aligning with TDP which got 15% vote share along with two more parties, TJS and CPI, but KCR cleverly used the presence of TDP chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu to stoke the Telangana sentiment, which is still dormant among the people.
KCR’s claim that Naidu would do back-seat driving in Telangana if Congress comes to power here seems to have struck a chord with the people. KCR also told the public that if Mahakutami came to power, Naidu would stall all ongoing irrigation projects by raising litigations over sharing Godavari and Krishna river waters, being the CM of AP, a downstream state.
Many a political pundit and media analyst have gone wrong in identifying the magnitude of his popularity among the public, for reasons more than one. Most of the educated elite and urban observers have felt that his style of functioning—mostly inaccessibility to them and their ilk—would play a role and that his failure to fill vacancies in government jobs would pose a threat to him.
However, they were proved wrong. The fact that his vote share has gone up from around 34% in 2014 to a little over 49% this time has exemplified the fact that a vast majority of people, both in rural and urban areas, have stood by him. His seat share too went up from 63 four years ago to 88 now. In the usual course, some amount of anti-incumbency should have worked against him.
However, that hasn’t happened in the case of KCR. This is chiefly because of his personal credibility and his administrative efficiency. KCR has shown to all that he can sense the pulse of the public and he knows what appeals to them and what sticks with them. His efficient handling of the elections through a combination of welfare schemes and Telangana sentiment has worked well.
Of course, his hard work in improving the electricity situation in the state, too, has contributed a lot to the positive mood among the people. He faced some trouble on the administration front in the first few months after coming to power in June 2014. KCR then realised that unless he improved the power supply, he could not earn the goodwill of the public.
He immediately swung into action and ensured that there were no power cuts to domestic and industrial category consumers and also stepped up supply to agricultural connections. By the end of 2014, the situation improved drastically and the public outcry over frequent power cuts turned into sighs of relief, a first step to build confidence over KCR’s administrative capabilities.
Enquires with officials and experts revealed that the improvement in power situation was possible because of two factors—first there was enough power to purchase from the market in the country thanks to the capacity building thrust given by the previous UPA governments. KCR ordered his officials to go for aggressive purchase of power from wherever it was available. Another measure was his decision to speed up existing power projects and commence some new ones while paying attention to toning up transmission and distribution network. Separation of feeders to agriculture and other categories and addition of scores of substations have reduced power failures and fluctuations, brining relief to rural consumers. This won him half the battle. KCR won the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation elections purely based on his track record in power sector and the urban voters stood behind him, thanks to the end of power cuts, the hallmark during the previous Congress governments. Winning 99 divisions out the total 150 in the GHMC elections in 2016 helped TRS government’s image to a great extent. After that, KCR turned his attention to social sector. Streamlining pensions to different kinds of helpless people is a major achievement of the TRS government. KCR’s move to increase the monthly pension of Rs 200 per person to Rs 1,000 is a bold move that earned him the goodwill of the masses. As many as 57 lakh people received pensions in the last four years.