Political parties in AP get into election mode

Hyderabad, May 28: Elections to the Lok Sabha and Andhra Pradesh Assembly may be two years away, but every party in the State appears to be busily engaged in planning its election strategy and wooing the electorate.

Be it conducting conferences and conventions or coming out with tall claims and promises, the parties are vying with one another to get a stronghold in the minds of the voters. Besides, most parties are also playing the Telangana card game, hoping to cash in on the sentiments of the people of the backward region.

The ruling Congress recently held 'Re-dedication Day', during which party second rung leaders and workers were mobilised on a large scale and told to start working for the success of the party in the 2009 polls. Party leaders, including Chief Minister Dr Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and PCC chief K Keshava Rao, told the functionaries that they should fan out to villages and create awareness among the masses about the achievements of the Government and the development programmes taken up by it.

Sending across a clear message, AICC General Secretary Digvijay Singh told the gathering that the ''honey moon is over and hard days are ahead.'' Dr Reddy was confident of winning the votes of farmers, banking on the provision of free power, waiver of their past electricity dues, issue of fresh loans to defaulters and lessees of land, and bringing a crore acres of dry land under irrigation with the help of ongoing projects.

Closely following the Congress, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) is holding its 'Mahanadu' (conference), which incidentally coincided with the silver jubilee celebrations of the party. The party, which had mobilised over 15,000 party workers at the temple town Tirupati, the venue of the conference, was tutoring them to publicise the ''misdeeds'' of the rulinng party, including ''bribes for awarding contracts for irrigation projects.''

The Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS), leaders of which were embroiled in the human trafficking scam, leading to the suspension of party's second-in-command A Narendra and his announcing the formation of a separate party, was engaged in a damage control exercise. TRS Founder K Chandrasekhara Rao was planning to tour the entire Telangana region to galvanise the support of the party cadre. He would hit the road with a rath yatra in June. This exercise would enable him to assess his own strength, sans 'Tiger' Narendra, as the strong man was known.

Mr Narendra, while announcing his new party TRS(N), levelled serious allegations against Mr Rao, the then Union Labour Minister, that he had swindled hundreds of crores of Rupees and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi was aware of it. So, he would never be able to strongly demand statehood to Telangana, he had alleged.

Though Mr Narendra was yet to clearly spell out his programme, he had declared that he would take the cooperation of people like actor-turned-politician Vijaya Shanti, balladeer Gaddar and the several BJP workers all over Telangana who had joined hands with him, to achieve Telangana State by 2009.

The BJP was trying to regain its lost ground by championing the cause of the Telangana region. The party, which was for smaller States, had not voiced support to the Telangana movement when the party-led NDA was ruling the Centre as the TDP, which had extended outside support to the Government, was against bifurcation of the State. However, after the TDP snapped its ties with the BJP following its poll debacle, the BJP was openly championing the cause of statehood to Telangana.

Eyeing the 17 Lok Sabha seats and 115 Assembly seats from the region, the party, with just two seats now, had set up a separate wing for achieving Telangana State. Party leaders would soon fan out to the villages of the region and try to convince the people that only a national party like the BJP could make their dream a reality.

UNI

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