TRS plans yatra against Centre over paddy issue

A day after announcing a boycott of the rest of the winter session of Parliament over the alleged indifferent attitude of the Centre towards paddy procurement, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) MPs are set to meet party president and state chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Thursday to brief him about developments in New Delhi and to discuss the strategy going forward, a senior leader said on Wednesday.

“There is a proposal that the TRS MPs would take out a bus yatra across the length and breadth of the state to explain how the Centre betrayed the farming community of Telangana by refusing to purchase the paddy produced in the state. The strategy may be worked out at Thursday’s meeting,” the party leader said on condition of anonymity.

TRS Parliamentary Party leader Kesava Rao said on Tuesday that the TRS will now adopt an aggressive approach towards the Narendra Modi government and oppose its every decision. “Aaj se hamara nara, Modi ko hatana” (From today, our slogan is to pull down Modi) .

“We shall oppose the BJP in the forthcoming Presidential and Vice-Presidential elections, though we extended support in the past,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is preparing to launch a series of agitations against the TRS government in the coming days. BJP state president Bandi Sanjay announced that the “million march” of the unemployed and second phase of his foot march , “Praja Sangrama Yatra” will be launched soon after the model code of conduct for the MLC elections comes to an end. The polling for the MLC elections is scheduled to be held on December 10 and the results will be declared on December 14.

Four BJP MPs and three MLAs from Telangana are expected to meet with Union home minister Amit Shah on Thursday, a party leader said on condition of anonymity.

The BJP is focussing on attracting hardcore Telangana activists who played a major role in the Telangana movement but have been neglected by the TRS in the last seven years.

The TRS has traditionally supported the BJP in Parliament, but in recent months, as the latter has grown its presence in Telangana, the former has changed its tune.

In December 2018 assembly elections, the BJP had won just one seat in the 119-member assembly and lost deposits in 106 seats. In the subsequent local body elections, too, the BJP fared very poorly -- it could not win even a single block or zilla parishad. However, in the 2019 general elections, the BJP bounced back by winning four Lok Sabha seats out of 17. In the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation elections held in December 2020, the BJP won 48 out of 150 divisions, as against 56 of the TRS.

On Tuesday, a popular Telangana activist Teenmaar Mallanna and former employees’ union leader Ch Vittal joined the BJP in New Delhi in the presence of the party’s Telangana in-charge Tarun Chugh. “BJP is the right platform for all those who fought for a separate Telangana, as there is no place for genuine Telangana lovers in the TRS,” Sanjay said.

The state BJP president said his party would go all out to end what he termed KCR’s dictatorial, dynastic and corrupt rule.