The other day, Telangana Rashtra Samithi president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has hinted that his party is ready to face the early elections if held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha elections.
Even family members, particularly his son K T Rama Rao and daughter K Kavitha, besides party floor leader in Lok Sabha A P Jithender Reddy, also favoured early simultaneous polls.
They are of the view that the early polls would be advantageous to the TRS, since the opposition parties are not prepared either in manpower or money to face the early elections.
But, political observers say the TRS leadership has obviously not taken the party legislators into confidence before expressing its consent for the early polls.
According to these observers, majority of the TRS MLAs are not prepared to face the early elections since they hardly did anything worthwhile to win the support of the voters. Therefore, they are all panicky with KCR’s decision.
A performance appraisal done by the TRS president on the MLAs is learnt to have revealed that at least 35-40 MLAs have put up poor performance and has bleak chances of winning the elections again.
The appraisal report is likely to be revealed during the forthcoming TRS legislature party meeting before the forthcoming budget session.
Though KCR assured in the past that all the sitting MLAs would get tickets, they are afraid that he might drop many of them showing their progress report. Since they would have very little time to rectify their mistakes, they fear they might not get the chance to contest again.
The MLAs say in private conversations that their hands were completely tied, as they hardly have any involvement in the developmental and welfare programmes.
“Everything is at the mercy of KCR and his family members. All the decisions are taken at Pragathi Bhavan. Even for a small representation on constituency issues, we have no say and we have to take the consent of the CMO. And we hardly get the appointment of the chief minister. How can we show better performance?” an MLA lamented.
The problem is more with the new comers and first-time MLAs, because they have to face tough competition from seniors in the Congress and the BJP.
“In 2014, we could win because of the strong Telangana sentiment. This time, we have to win based on our performance. That is the difference,” the MLA pointed out.
