K Chandrasekhar Rao’s first year filled with disasters

Hyderabad: Though the K. Chandrasekhar Rao-led TRS government, during its second term in power, in the first year successfully inaugurated Rao’s dream project, the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation scheme and had a successful performance in the gram panchayat and zilla parishad polls, it has been facing severe criticism from the opposition parties for not fulfilling the election promises.

Opposition parties are mainly targeting the debt burden of the state, not extending the pension benefit to the people of upto 57 years of age, not providing a loan waiver to farmers besides many other poll promises.

The ruling party, in the first year of its second stint, also faced hardships from the judiciary, particularly with regard to the Chief Minister’s plans to construct new buildings for the Secretariat and the Assembly.

The TRS also faced public uproar over the intermediate results fiasco. It also had a hard time during the RTC employees strike with the deaths of RTC workers and Rao’s mulishness and refusal to dialogue with them.

After coming to power, Rao successfully neutralised his main opposition, the Congress party, by allowing the merger of 12 Congress MLAs into the TRS, but could not succeed in  his aim of winning 16 MPs seats in the Lok Sabha elections and leading the federal front to play a crucial role in national politics with support of his close friend and AP Chief Minister, Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy.

The Congress and the BJP cornered Rao to settle with nine seats, losing two seats which TRS had won in 2014 polls.

The defeat of Rao’s daughter, Kavitha, also was a big setback for him in his first year of the second term.

With the results of the Lok Sabha elections, Rao appears to be changed his mind on playing a crucial role in national politics and confined himself to state politics.

Rao also mooted joint irrigation projects for both Telugu-speaking states with Reddy’s cooperation but those could not materialise with the change in mindset of the AP government and its decision of doing projects on its own.