Telangana Rashtra Samithi president and caretaker chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s overconfidence on his political skills is said to backfiring in the ongoing elections, if the reports from the ground are any indication.
KCR dissolved the state assembly almost two months ago on September 6 and announced the list of 105 candidates on the same day. His confidence was that his welfare and developmental programmes would get the positive result to his party.
A survey commissioned by him has revealed that every family in the Telangana state was the beneficiary of at least three schemes taken up by his government.
So, his calculation was that people would blindly vote for the TRS, irrespective of the candidates he would be fielding in the constituencies. In a way, it was a positive thinking.
But as the candidates actually began their campaigning, they realised that all is not well for the party at the ground level.
In many places, people are pulling up the TRS candidates as majority of the schemes had not reached them and the TRS MLAs were hardly accessible to them.
With a series of negative reports flooding from the rural areas, KCR is now in second minds. Added to this, the opposition parties have joined hands to form Maha Kootami.
Though they are still stuck up at the seat sharing stage, the message that has gone into the people that they are fighting together. This is another negative factor for the TRS.
As a result, KCR and his family members have now been forced to shift their campaign style from positive to negative.
Instead of talking about the positive aspects of the TRS government, these leaders have started attacking the TDP-Congress alliance in particular and Maha Kootami in general.
From “please vote for me” appeal to “Please don’t vote for Maha Kootami” caution, the TRS leadership has given the impression that its confidence level has come down drastically!
