Hyderabad, April 28: “Arrogance is like a political creature. It does not have senses. It has only a sharp tongue and the pointing finger.”

At the halfway mark in the ongoing cricketing tamasha called Indian Premier League cricketers of all hues and cries are engaged in intense cricketing battle.

While the cricketers are sweating it out and staking their pride and prestige, with elections appearing anytime, the political stadium in Andhra Pradesh is witnessing contests of entirely different nature. Here the politician involved in a game of political musical chairs making the game of politics too intense and hot.

While the contest among the cricketers is very fascinating, that of politicians is becoming more irritating and causing apprehensions. It is entirely different matter as Sports are always entertaining, politics is forever exasperating.

In a rapidly moving game of political one-upmanship among them, each party has embarked on taking up different programmes like conducting padayatras to holding Samarabheri public meetings.

Even as CBN held a massive public meeting to mark culmination of his Vasthunna Mee kosam padayatra at Vishakhapatnam, TRS organized an impressive show of strength at Armoor to mark its 12th formation day. While, KCR made an attempt to roar with rhetoric, CBN tried to convince the people that he is indeed a changed man for the good.

While what shape the antics of Chandrababu would take is a matter to be known in future, KCR’s impressive show at Armoor turned out be a show of pure rhetoric belying the expectations that the meeting would present an action plan to advance Telangana movement. Instead, the meeting controlled by KCR’s rhetoric focused entirely on Political future of the Party.

When a good number TRS honchos small and big, young and old with mini and mega mindsets or no mindsets assembled in the guise of observing the 12th Formation day to work out a new action plan to re-launch Telangana movement at Armoor, it didn’t turn out to be either a clash of the titans or intellectual gymnastics but an “exercise to enable politics and disable the movement”. The rendezvous was only a move to prove that the KCR Parivar was fully in control of both the movement and the party. KCR was full of confidence, and the consensus reached among the party men to his rhetoric symbolized the vital paradigm shift of the party towards more politics and less action plan to strengthen the movement.

Since its existence in the last twelve years, TRS remained hanger-on either to the Congress or to the TDP. At the same time it was no mean achievement to have sustained the politics around the Telangana movement in the face of myriad political scenarios in the long and chequered journey. Amid this roller coaster political journey, KCR led his party with an unmatched alacrity and unparalleled political dexterity. TRS grew into a force to reckon with, yet it hasn’t fortified its position from being a fledgling toddler to an enthusiastic teenager raring to go.

Now the congregation of ‘pink panthers’ is all set to behave like adolescents with its supremo making it clear that the party might be contesting alone in the elections so as to prove its strength among all the parts of Telangana.

Having gained little from the Centre even after intensifying the agitation, KCR is now focusing entirely on the political battle. The election provides him with a huge opportunity to improve the TRS’s political muscle.

The TRS by announcing it will fight the polls alone is also indicating its self-confidence. But it is not as if the drive is not going to be bumpy for KCR. The flip side is that there could be a few Mahbubnagars along the way (the BJP defeated the TRS in a by-poll in Mahbubnagar in 2012) but that is a risk the TRS seems to be willing to take. The pitch that is likely to be sold to the voters in the region is that unless they vote in big numbers for the TRS, there will be no Telangana.

For more than a decade, KCR has been selling a dream to the people of Telangana. The sentiment is still strong in many parts of the region but it is also coupled with disenchantment not only with the Congress but also with the TRS. The party has used the emotion for statehood to gain politically, with KCR’s family now virtually in control of the TRS.

KCR, who asserted that the Telangana movement would continue until the separate state is achieved, has now set his eyes on winning 100 out of 119 assembly seats and 15 out of 17 Lok Sabha seats in the region. He tells the people that a resounding victory with these numbers would bestow a politically decisive position on the party.

Of course this target is like aiming for the sky. Would KCR’s party scale up to telephone wires is a conjecture of time.

The next election will be a make or a break for the TRS. If it wins anywhere close to one hundred seats in the assembly and 13-15 MPs, it will call the shots both in Hyderabad and in New Delhi. And KCR has a reputation of being a hard bargainer. But if it gets less than 60, it will be seen as empirical evidence that the Telangana sentiment is not widespread across the region as it is made out to be and will dilute the demand for statehood.

By seeking recourse for Parliamentary lobbying as the only way to achieve Telangana, KCR is all set to enable the politics and disable the Telangana and its movement which has always been an independent idea, a political aspiration, an emotional sentiment and a cultural curiosity.

The ball is now in the Telangana polling booths.

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