Telangana movement: Platform for politicos to gain ground

Hyderabad, Oct 5: The ongoing 'struggle' for Telangana has sparked off a turf war within the main political parties in Andhra Pradesh. Unmindful of whether or not they reach the ultimate goal of securing statehood for the region, everyone involved in this turf war wants to score brownie points and emerge the 'champion', or at least be seen as one, in the larger political game of one-upmanship.

"The Telangana agitation is providing a good platform for ambitious politicians to climb the political ladder, while old-timers, mostly in Congress and BJP are using the opportunity to stay afloat in the current tide," observed political commentator T Ravi.

In the separatist Telangana Rashtra Samiti – the self-styled torch-bearer of the statehood movement – two young MLAs and cousins, K Taraka Rama Rao (KTR) and T Harish Rao, are battling it out between themselves in the succession war within the outfit.

Rama Rao is TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao's son, while Harish is his nephew. Given his communication skills as well as command over English, KTR is trying to build a national profile for himself, while Harish seems more focused on the home turf.

After his father, KTR has emerged as the only voice of TRS in the national media these days. In the principal opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDS), senior legislators M Narasimhulu and Errabilli Dayakar Rao are in the forefront of the internal supremacy war.

Interestingly, four MLAs, who recently walked out of the TDP, are also seeking to join the battlefield and be counted. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has veteran leaders Bandaru Dattatreya, Ch Vidyasagar Rao and N Indrasena Reddy fighting to safeguard their relevance in the entire scheme of things and regain lost glory – their individual as well as that of the party. Giving them competition is the relatively younger G Kishan Reddy, an MLA and president of BJP's AP unit.

PTI