Lord, have MercHe’s the sort of man who believes in luck, and Husnabad has indeed been lucky for Bharat Rashtra Samithi chief K. Chandrashekar Rao, a.k.a. KCR. He launched his last two poll campaigns from this constituency, and won both times. In fact, he calls the local BRS MLA, Vodithela Satish, “Lakshmi putrudu” (Goddess Laskhmi’s son) for that reason. This time, KCR knows he could really do with a visitation from Lady Fortune. So it was no surprise that his cavalcade landed in this Telangana outback—as the crow flies, 130-odd km northeast of capital Hyderabad—on October 15 to launch the party’s poll campaign. It will be a barnstorming tour across his realm, with some 42 rallies sprinkled over a state nearly 1.15 lakh sq. km in area, till November 9. That’s just the first phase—a wide-angle sweep, if you will. KCR will zoom in on select constituencies once nominations close on November 10 and take his chariot right to the frontlines in more clearly defined micro-battlezones.His mentor NTR had pretty much invented the political ‘rath yatra’ in modern Indian politics back in the early 1980s, an idea later nationalised by the BJP’s L.K. Advani. NTR’s chosen vahana was a 1940 model Chevrolet van from Gemini Studios in Madras. Ironically, for a party whose poll symbol is the Ambassador car, KCR will be chilling inside a different kind of jalopy: a Mercedes-Benz bus gifted by Akhilesh Yadav. The Merc will be emblazoned with the ‘car’ sym­bol—but of course—as also images of KCR, and the map of India in vibrant pink hues. Pièce de résistance? An inbuilt hydraulic elevator that will enable KCR to move effortlessly to the roof and address the aam janata outside. Will his fortune graph rise as smoothly? Greener pastures.preferred-source-banner{ margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom:10px;} The All-India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) is seeking to outgrow its reputation of being just a ghettoblaster confined to its seven strongholds in the Old City. This time, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi is planning an ingress into the 24 assembly constituencies in the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation region—those like Jub­ilee Hills, Musheerabad and Rajendranagar have a decent sprinkling of Muslim voters. His recent national outings have often queered the pitch for rivals from the ‘secular’ fronts. In Telangana, with his tacit pact with the BRS, which way will he make the ball swing?Territorial waters It’s been thirsting to become a theme that gets enough airplay. And on October 16, Rajasthan’s Eastern River Canal Project (ERCP) finally made the cut when Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge and CM Ashok Gehlot landed in the barrenness of Baran district—part of a fist-like protrusion into the Madhya Pradesh map—to launch a poll yatra that will pass through all of 13 eastern Rajasthan districts. The key talking point: the Centre’s tardiness in granting national status to the ERCP, which holds the promise of transforming the region. By contrast, the Gehlot regime’s Rs 14,000 crore outlay for the project will be presented as keen-eyed munificence.It was at a dull Jaipur conference on the Centre’s Jal Jeevan Mission in April 2022 that the waters suddenly came to a boil, so to speak. State minister Mahesh Joshi demanded that PM Narendra Modi keep his promise of funding the project...and a cornered Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, Union Jal Shakti minister, angrily denied the existence of any such promise! Shekhawat, from the western desert end of Rajasthan, has been a picture of discombobulation ever since: saying the project is technically unviable, and that the Centre’s river-linking project would meet this zone’s needs. And Gehlot, already sitting on a traditional edge in these parts for the Congress, has been milking the issue for all it’s worth ever since.Loyalty points Dalit, Adivasi, the poor, youth, women... the order of wooing usually goes like that during poll season. But Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh has made a novel pitch: to IAS officers in Madhya Pradesh. Last week, he promised that state bureaucrats who’d been penalised by the Shivraj Singh Chouhan regime would get justice! Any adverse entries in their Annual Confidential Reports would be expunged if the Congress came to power. In power terms, think of it as a EBC sub-category within the ruling clique.More Hindu than thou Soft Hindutva? In ‘Kamal’ Nath’s Madhya Pradesh, that barb at the Congress seems seriously old-fashioned—its devoutly observant aspect here could make a jyotishi blush. Its first list of candidates came on October 15, very consciously timed on the first day of Navratri, and a day after the inauspicious Shraadh Pitr Paksha period drew to a close. It was released at 9.09 am and had 144 names—1 + 4 + 4 = 9. Navratri, you see? It’s all cloud nine.—By Amarnath K. Menon, Rohit Parihar and Rahul NoronhaCongress manifestos | No farewell to welfareThe Congress’s poll manifestos are following a distinct pattern. Though Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Telangana are yet to receive their renewed vouchers for the Grand Old Party’s gift hampers, we already have a near-complete picture. It’s a policy blueprint incubated and evolved in its own laboratories—the states it rules (Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh) or won recently. The party’s bouquet of 1,290 promises for Madhya Pradesh and its pledges for Mizoram, both released on October 17, borrows much from those two states. And Telangana is being offered visions similar to Karnataka. The common thread? Of course, its own formula of welfarism. This often comes with an implied or overt critique of ‘gaps’ in the BJP’s central policies (public health, jobs, farm MSPs, pension). And sometimes with equally visible copycat (Hindu appeasement) and competitive strands (women’s welfare). Telangana - EndsPublished By: Shyam BalasubramanianPublished On: Oct 20, 2023Must Watch
