State scan: K Chandrasekhar Rao takes a swing from Mamata to Narendra Modi

On August 4, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi for a second time in two months.

The meeting was significant. Between the two meetings, his son, and political heir K T Rama Rao also met Modi on June 29.

The media was told the second meeting the senior Rao had with Modi was about a known wish list of the state government. The only change in the wish list in the second meeting was the issue of increase in reservation for schedules castes and scheduled tribes and creating 12 per cent reservation for Muslims under the OBC category this time around.

Despite the prime minister’s stated position that his government will not consider any proposal that seeks to cross the 50 per cent threshold for reservation, the request was part of the wish list.

Media reports were centred on discussions that Modi had with KCR regarding the strategy for elections because the interests of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were “perfectly aligned with each other”, particularly after Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu’s exit from the National Democratic Alliance.

A pre-poll alliance is unlikely to have been part of the discussions because both the leaders know that their interests are well served by keeping a political distance in Telangana, whose Muslim population is more than 12 per cent.

With little improvement in its political or organisational profile after the state’s bifurcation, the BJP is in no position to directly or indirectly influence the electoral outcome.

The TRS would like to see a stronger BJP in Telangana for a possible split in the anti-incumbency vote, if any, in the next elections. The bonhomie that has often been seen between the two leaders in New Delhi is absent in Telangana because the state BJP leadership is bitterly critical of KCR and his government.

The Congress, the only other contender for power in the state, is the common target of the BJP and the TRS. Naidu’s new-found friendship with the Congress has forced them to deal with the two common political enemies together. 

The talk of Naidu’s push for a possible alliance with the Congress in Telangana has not gone down well with the TRS leadership.

If anything, KCR’s political skills and strategies will be put to the test in the coming days because he is expected to be part of the BJP’s bigger political game plan to checkmate its political rivals in the two Telugu-speaking states. The BJP leadership feels the need for collaboration with KCR more than before, especially after it failed to control Naidu’s political moves.

Modi’s engagement with KCR comes at a time when the latter’s much-publicised federal front move fell flat in the face of a more aggressive and politically inclusive stand taken by leaders such as Mamata Banerjee, besides the formation of the Congress-JD(S) government in Karnataka.

That brings KCR looking to strengthen his own position in the state by leveraging its friendly relations with the Modi government while continuing with the current political posturing towards the BJP.

In the given context some of KCR’s requests such as the Centre’s grant for the Kaleshwaram lift irrigation project, speeding up work on new railway lines and approving the new zonal system for government recruitments in Telangana are expected to get Modi’s approval. 

This would only help enhance the goodwill for the Centre in the eyes of TRS and the people of Telangana.

Having launched investment-heavy developmental initiatives, and welfare and subsidy programmes in the past four years, the TRS leadership is hoping to win the next elections on the goodwill generated by these schemes and on the back of the right socio-political alignments. 

It may be recalled that the TRS’s ties with Parliament Member Assaduddin Owaisi’s Majlis-e-Ittahadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) have been working quite well for both of them. The Congress seems to have nothing to offer to the AIMIM, with which it had a long and indirect electoral understanding in the past.