KCR gets hero's welcome, party paints city pink

Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) president K Chandrasekhara Rao today received a hero's welcome from thousands of party workers and sympathisers on his arrival from Delhi following the passage of the Telangana statehood Bill in the Parliament. The supporters had gathered here from across the region.

The party painted the Twin Cities pink, the colour of its flag, and banners were put on several important traffic junctions besides honouring its leader with a procession of horses and camels.

He was also given a traditional aarti by hundreds of womenfolk before he led the 'victory rally' from Begumpet airport (the old airport) after he was airlifted in a helicopter from Hyderabad international airport.

The welcome arrangements made by the leadership were grand in style. The party cadres raised slogans terming KCR as Mahatma Gandhi and Mandela of the Telangana statehood struggle.

However, not all who were associated with KCR in the decade-long political agitation were happy with the way the event was conducted on Wednesday and the way he was sought to be projected by the TRS as singularly responsible for the achievement. "This is height of sycophancy. But what we witnessed today is also good because a firecracker, how far it may zoom into the sky, has to fall on the ground the next moment," a senior activist, who had been a part of the present Telangana agitation, told Business Standard.

The rally, which turned into a purely TRS affair, also comes as a first show of strength of this magnitude by the party in the Twin Cities, where it was never considered a big force. It had failed to win even a single division in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation elections in the past.

Meanwhile, as party workers spilled all over the roads the traffic went completely out of gear and even made the progress of KCR's rally to Gun Park in front of the state Assembly extremely slow. At the time writing this, the rally was still progressing. At Gun Park, KCR was scheduled to pay homage to the Telangana martyrs, who had died in police firing during the separate Telangana movement in 1969.

Other routes in the city also got choked as police diverted the traffic to make way for the rally.

No to merger with Congress

Meanwhile, the party workers also raised slogans asking the leadership not to merge with the Congress as was announced in the past by KCR.

While KCR was credited with bringing back the demand for separate statehood to the centre stage of AP politics following a long period of lull, the Congress, however, claims the prime role in making the pipe-dream a reality almost on the verge of general elections.

Though two parties are expected to go hand in hand if not merge before the elections, the TRS' show sought to project itself as a major player in the post bifurcation politics and not as a junior partner to the Congress, according to political observers. Some reports suggested KCR had sought a larger role in the Telangana government while leaving most of the Lok Sabha seats for the Congress.