The KCR Gambit

Political debate heats up in Telangana over early elections.

- Ajay Sukumaran in Bangalore

Telangana chief minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao app­ ears to have two priorities at the moment, in this order: checkmate the opposition with early polls and retain power for another term. If it had been a game of chess, the 64­year­ old’s calculative move to advance the state elections by at least six months, before the scheduled fix­ture in April­May next year, would be a fine gambit. But politics fol­ lows its own set of rules. The Opposition, especially the Congress un­ der whose wings he cut his political teeth in the 1980s, accused him of being afraid—that his pot of alleged wrongdoings will brim over by the time the polls are held in 2019 and that voters will reject him.

Scared? Who? The mood in the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) is full of confidence, despite dissenting voices reported within the party for the first time. Party leaders justify KCR’s move, saying surveys conducted by their own party as well the Congress and BJP give a clear edge to the TRS. Besides, they say, the seed of early polls was sown when the Narendra Modi government proposed simultaneous elections, an idea the Election Commission has ruled out for now. The TRS and Naveen Patnaik’s BJD endorsed the Centre’s proposal, though several states ruled by the Congress and other opposition parties—for instance, the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal and Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh—have apparently opposed it.