TRS finds alibi to skip polls

A nervous Telangana Rashtra Samithi is likely to skip the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation polls despite demanding that the capital city should be part of a separate Telangana state.

The TRS, which also took up the issue of police recruitment in Hyderabad in real earnest recently, is using the indefensible pretext of intensifying the Telangana struggle for not contesting the GHMC polls. Political observers see it is a face saving gesture.

It is learnt that the TRS, which is essentially a rural party, is worried about how the urban voter would react to its recent slogans.

Initially, the party planned to go it alone and contest 100-odd seats with focus on 25 to 30 seats in its strongholds.

However, there were serious apprehensions among some senior leaders that the party might face a drubbing in the cosmopolitan city which would dent its image further. It has barely recovered from the poor show in the recent Assembly polls.

This decision is likely to disappoint TRS leaders and cadre and will also evoke criticism from advocates of united Andhra Pradesh.

The TRS politburo, which met under the chairmanship of the party president, Mr K. Chandrasekhar Rao, here on Friday, felt the party should stay away from GHMC polls and instead prepare for the Telangana struggle.

The TRS Hyderabad city president, Mr T. Padma Rao and senior party leader, Mr Nayani Narasimha Reddy, were keen to fight the elections to keep up the morale of city leaders and cadre, but Mr Chandrasekhar Rao dissuaded them by saying that 95 per cent of the politburo members were opposed to the TRS contesting the polls.

He also said it would take away the focus from his ‘fast unto death’ programme from the last week of November if there was no favourable response from State and Central governments on their demand for carving out a separate State.

Mr Chandrasekhar Rao, however, added that the final decision on the GHMC polls would be taken at the party’s executive committee on Monday after getting feedback from the city leaders and cadre. “For us the struggle for separate Telangana is more important than polls,” he said.

At the same time, he also criticised the State Election Commission for announcing poll dates unilaterally without consulting political parties as is the norm.

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