Telangana polls: Can K Chandrashekar Rao, who outmanoeuvred his opponents in the last two polls, beat the odds this time around?
Hyderabad, you can’t miss the pink billboards dotting the city. They overlook busy streets and flyovers.
Small ones are tied to pillars of metro stations. Each hoarding has three elements —a large photo of K Chandrashekar Rao or KCR in his typical white attire, his party symbol car and a crisp message in Telugu or, occasionally, in English.
One message reads: “36 flyovers, underpasses and bridges, let’s make 100 more…. Let’s go from good to great.”
Once you cross the city limits and chat with farmers, shopkeepers, students and youngsters in the countryside, you will realise that it’s no longer a good-to-great story for the 69-year-old chief minister of Telangana, who is seeking a third term and making a bid to outshine the political icons of undivided Andhra Pradesh such as N Chandrababu Naidu and the late YS Rajasekhara Reddy (YSR).
Anti-incumbency sentiments and even anger against KCR and his party, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), is palpable across Ranga Reddy, Medak, Kamareddy, Karimnagar, Jagtial and Warangal districts where ET travelled earlier this week.
Telangana, which was carved out of Andhra Pradesh in 2014, will vote on November 30 to elect 119 MLAs.
THIRD TIME, TOO, LUCKY?
The forthcoming assembly election could turn out to be the toughest test for KCR, the wily politician who outmanoeuvred his opponents in the last two elections, first by rolling the dice in 2014 to not ally with the Congress at the last moment and then gambling once more in 2018 when he stumped his opponents by advancing the polls by six months. In both cases, KCR reaped handsome dividends.
In 2014, his party, then called Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), won 63 seats, a decent tally, which it improved to a resounding 88 in 2018. Then
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