The clean sweep of the bypolls to the 12 Assembly constituencies in Telangana by the Telangana Rashtra Samithi and its ally, the BJP, has strengthened the demand for a separate state like nothing else before it. While there was a general defeatist air around the campaign of the Congress and the Telugu Desam Party, the magnitude of
their trouncing has left both searching for a cogent explanation. TDP candidates lost their deposits in all the 12 seats, the Congress in four. The biggest electoral shock to the ruling party came with the defeat of APCC president D. Srinivas. The TRS reaped the harvest of being the sole protagonist of the Telangana sentiment. The quick fixes that the Congress and the TDP attempted simply did not wash with the voters. While the Congress, Mr Srinivas especially, belatedly expressed outright support for statehood, the TDP took up the agitation against the Babli barrage in Maharashtra to project itself as the “protector of Telangana’s interests”.
The Congress’ apparent “switch” on statehood — the December 9, 2009 statement of Union home minister P. Chidambaram that “the process for formation of a separate state of Telangana has been initiated” and the subsequent “backtracking” exemplified by the constitution of the Srikrishna Committee to study the question of statehood — did the party no good. The TRS also appears to have benefited from the traditional Congress-TDP rivalry. Voters were swayed by “sympathy” for TRS candidates, who had resigned to press the statehood demand. The TRS victory showed that the Congress and the TDP reliance on their traditional vote banks was misplaced. Voters across caste and religion lines were too overcome by the statehood slogan of the TRS to care much for their former party affiliations. TRS chief Chandrasekhar Rao’s charge that the Congress and the TDP were adopting double standards on statehood stuck with voters. He was able to convince them that it was only by giving a massive victory to TRS could they send an emphatic signal to the Srikrishna Committee to take a favourable decision on the five-decade-old demand for statehood for Telangana.
The verdict will provide more vigour to the Telangana protagonists. The landslide could push into the background the findings of the Srikrishna Committee, mandated to submit its report by December 31. The Congress has been sitting on the Telangana demand for almost 50 years, even after including the issue in its election manifesto in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. The party allowed its leaders from the different regions of Andhra Pradesh to express their respective views before the Srikrishna Committee, clearly telling voters that it had no single stand on the demand for Telangana statehood, leaving them deeply suspicious of the influence of the so-called Andhra lobby on decision-making. The TDP simply followed in the Congress’ footsteps. Indeed, it pledged its support to the idea of statehood, and then reneged.
The Congress will also have to deal with the Jaganmohan Reddy factor. A strong votary of a united AP, the late Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy’s ambitious son might feel emboldened to take on the party leadership. For its part, the TDP will need to make itself politically valid in the changed circumstances. Neither party can afford to brush aside the poll verdict. Elections to the all-important local bodies are round the corner, and those to municipalities and municipal corporations are due next year. The Congress and TDP currently dominate the grassroots local bodies, but that could change very quickly, as the byelection results have shown.