KCR: The face of Telangana movement brushes aside united opposition, gets another term

In April 2001, he formed the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) to achieve statehood for Telangana. He went about propagating his cause aggressively, giving out several interviews to the media and lashing out at Naidu for not being committed enough to the people of Telangana.

When he was sworn in as the first chief minister of the newly born state, the mood was strongly in his favour as the man whose steadfast commitment to the cause of the people made Telangana a reality. (Twitter/@trspartyonline)

His party contested the 2004 general elections in an alliance with the Congress with a promise from the latter of statehood to Telangana. However, the relationship between the two was far from being smooth. In the next decade, he frequently dutifully reminded the public the reason for his existence in the political sphere, that being Telangana, and on more than one occasion quit the alliance with the Congress in his protest against their lack of sufficient support to the cause.

In 2009, when the then Congress chief minister in Andhra Pradesh, YSR Reddy, died in a helicopter crash, KCR sat on a hunger strike. The 11 days of strike saw violent protests across the state, severe enough for the Center to take notice and on December 9, 2009, the government made a promise to create a separate Telangana state.

Statehood did become reality, but not before another five years of consistent struggle on the part of KCR and his party. When he was sworn in as the first chief minister of the newly born state, the mood was strongly in his favour as the man whose steadfast commitment to the cause of the people made Telangana a reality. Four years later though, when the state voted for the second time, it was KCR’s performance as chief minister rather than his rallying call for statehood that was called into question.

What seems to have worked for him in the assembly elections were electrification in rural areas, and other welfare schemes that he launched. Some of the schemes he began in the last four years are cash to farmers, cash for girls getting married, free pensions for the disabled, the elderly and the widowed. His promise to hand out houses to poor families is yet another program that seems to have played a part in his impressive victory.

Telangana CM K Chandrashekar Rao at a public meeting. (Express Photo)

However, there are other issues in which his government did not fair as expected. It is worth noting that in 2015, Telangana was ranked third in the number of farmer suicides in the country. The chief minister is yet to come up with a solution to the irrigation issues in the rural areas of the state. Employment opportunities was one of the key issues based on which the state was formed in 2014. Yet in that sector too, Rao has not shown a remarkable improvement. According to the ‘Unemployment in India – A statistical profile’ prepared by the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and Center for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), Telangana ranked third the country in unemployment among graduates.

The current assembly election results, however, show that his popularity has remained intact, despite a formidable opposition put up by the Congress, TDP, the CPI and the Telangana Jana Samithi.