Too many parties want to reap the benefit from ” Telangana” if something goes wrong, at the cost of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) or other major parties. Even though the ruling pink party, which is driving the ‘Car’ at full throttle, is confident of winning 100 seats in 150 strong Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, a small mishap is bound to turn the car turtle. Because, there is a crowd of ‘Telangana’ parties in the fray in the GHMC elections some of which potential enough to split some votes. There is even suspicion that these parties have been encouraged to field candidates to split TRS votes.
The Telangana movement spawned number of organizations, groups and associations in the name of Telangana. The term ” Telangan” used to lent credence to the activities of these groups. After the formation of Telangana state, many of these organization have transformed into political parties. According to the sources in the state election commission and Election of Commission of India, there is no district in the new state without a political party with the word ‘Telangana’ in its title besides TRS. When the first election in 2014 was fought with intense T-sentiment generated by TRS , these small parties could not rear their heads. Now, with TRS is becoming a old party, these parties are surfacing to test their acceptability among the public of Telangana. Some of them are really hopeful that some confusion the ‘word’ Telangana bound to generate help them prove their existence felt in politics. If they garner more votes, there is every possibility of a big bargain from the major parties like Congress and BJP and TRS in future.
So, the ‘Telangana’ of TRS and the Telangana’ other parties is all set to confuse at least some voters who rely on the name rather than the symbol- because of excessive attachment to the word Telangana.
In the ongoing GHMC elections, 15 political parties are trying their luck with the magic word of ‘Telangana’. Even though these parties are not be seen anywhere in the campaign arena, their oly strength is the word ‘ Telangana’ and some accidental deviant behaviour of semi-literate voters will come to their rescue. After the withdrawal of nominations there remained 71 parties in the fray. Of these, 15 parties have registered their title with ‘Telangana ‘ word. These parties are Praja Telangana Samithi, Samajika Telangana Samiti, Telangana Bharata Janata Party, Telangana Rajya Samiti Party, Telangana Party, Telangana Communist Party, Telangana Congress Party, Telangana Democratic Party, Telangana Lok Satta Party, Telangana Yuva Sena Party, Telangana Yuva Sakthi party and Yuva Telangana Party.
political observers see a some element of mischief in naming the outfit in such a way that the invariably sounder closer to the one of the main political parties in the Telangana state. In one closely observe the titles, they sound similarity with TRS Congress, YSRC, Lok Satta, BJP and Communist.
TRS and other major parties are confident that voters won’t get confused by the title Telangana as many of them are well aware of the symbols like Car, Hand, Lotus etc which, which are too popular with the masses.
All these “Telangana” candidates are mainly restricted to their localities and divisions, and entered the fray as independent candidates. A party called Telangana Yuva Sakti party has fielded candidates in just two wards of Kacheguda and Charlapally. This party says their main rival is TRS,which it alleges failed to fulfill the election promises it offered in 2014 elections.
Party president B Rammohan Reddy says they are focusing on poor civic amenities in their wards. He is confident of spilling TRS votes. He is appealing to voters not to vote for TRS and vote for the hi party which stands for local level improvement of wards. On the other hand the case of Telangana Lok Satta Party, formed by a splinter group of Lok Satta Party of Jayaprakash Narayan, is interesting. It is working for TRS to divert the pro Lok Satta votes to TRS.
Surepalli Yadagiri Reddy, an active worker of TRS Kothapet rubbishes the argument that these little known groups would affect the prospects of TRS. ” Many of these parties are not serious ones. They file nominations and expect main parties to approach them with a request to withdraw and offer some money. In many divisions, some parties remain in fray as they are ignored by the parties,” Reddy told Telugu360.com
Reddy however did admit that given the fierce competition, some of them really have enough potential (by getting about 1500 to 2000 votes) to upset the apple cart of major parties in some division .
