Much ado over BRS Khammam public meeting

(MS Shanker)
Come January 18, the State chief minister Kalvakuntla Chandrasekhar Rao, who converted his regional TRS into BRS (Bharatiya Rashtra Samiti), is set to blow the bugle of his new party’s arrival on the national arena. According to official sources, Rao reportedly extended formal invites to several chief ministers like Arvind Kejriwal and Bhagwant Singh Mann (both CMs of Delhi and Punjab), Pinnarayi Ravi (Kerala), besides former CMs of UP (Akhilesh Yadav of SP) and Karnataka (Kumara Swamy of JDS). Ostensibly, there is no mention of the Bihar CM Nitish Kumar, who was also on a similar mission to form a formidable alternative to take on the BJP in the upcoming 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Apart from Nitish, one doesn’t know whether KCR is also extending similar invites to West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC president Mamata Banerjee or Sharad Pawar of Nationalist Congress or Shiv Sena Chief Udhav Thackeray, Abdullahs, and others. How many of those who were invited will turn up is still an unanswered question and there is no official confirmation from any one of them. Besides, how many of these parties will yield any ground to BRS in their states as a matter of conjecture. Barring Karnataka’s Kumaraswamy, no other political leader might be prepared to do that. Interestingly, KCR chose to hold this massive meeting at Khammam, which is not his party’s stronghold. The public meeting is also aimed at stemming the discontent within BRS in the combined Khammam district. Moreover, the BJP and TDP‘s focus on Khammam appears to have rattled the BRS leadership. But, the fact remains that it could win just one out of 10 assembly seats in the 2018 assembly polls. Added to that, two of his senior party leaders from the party like former party MP Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy and former minister Tummala Nageswara Rao, are set to join the BJP. Srinivas Reddy is reportedly in touch with senior BJP leader and Union Minister Amit Shah.
So is Tummala, if one has to believe news reports. KCR wanted his party cadres to mobilize 5 lakh people of whom three lakhs were from the district itself.
He expects his party leaders also to bring in crowds from neighboring West Godavari and Vijayawada, besides Guntur, which form the border with the state. Farmer and farm sector would be the main agenda for the public meeting to send home a message to different parts of the country as to how round-the-clock free power to agricultural pump sets, Rs 10,000 per acre investment support under Rythu Bandhu every year, Rs 5 lakh life insurance cover to landholding farmers irrespective of the cause of their death under Rythu Bima, execution of irrigation projects and others which are being implemented in Telangana.
KCR is also expected to raise the water woes of parts of Andhra Pradesh such as Rayalaseema and North Coastal Andhra areas with the diversion of Godavari waters. The party’s think tank believes that people of AP living in Telangana are the “brand ambassadors” of progressive Telangana back home in AP.
Party sources claim that none should misconstrue it as a ‘show of strength’, but an attempt to spread a message on the anti-farmer policies being pursued by the BJP-led Government at the Centre, besides its anti-federal spirit of the country. “Our leader’s idea is to provide a platform to various like-minded party leaders to share ideas with people so that their views could be spread across the country and thus send a strong message over the politics of hegemony”, claims a senior BRS leader. Sources also claim that Chief Ministers of States ruled by friendly parties such as Pinarayi Vijayan (Kerala), Arvind Kejriwal (Delhi) and Bhagwant Singh Mann (Punjab), and former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav (Uttar Pradesh) and H.D. Kumaraswamy (Karnataka) and others are likely to address the public meeting besides BRS president and Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao. While KCR and his party are busy organizing the massive public meeting, the party’s former MP Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy is set to join the BJP on the same day to cause some embarrassment to the party leadership. Whether another party dissident Tummala who is a heavyweight from the district in his own right, is set to join BJP on the same day or not is not known yet.