Farmers Movement Archive

TDP’s disconnect with local electorate

Telugu Desam Party, which has been a force to reckon with in the city and its surroundings in the 2014 elections to Assembly and 2016 elections to GHMC, appears to have lost intensity in this election to GHMC although it has fielded 106 candidates for the 150-member council. One clear indication is the keeping away of top party leadership away from the campaigning. The publicity material used by TDP contestants have a disconnect with the local electorate as the songs used in the campaign here were apparently made for the last Assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh. The audio songs give a call to supporters to strengthen the hands of party chief Nara Chandrababu Naidu terming him the creator of ‘Swarnandhra’. The high decibel campaigning for GHMC elections was not short of one for a major State or national election. As put by national secretary of Communist Party of India (CPI) K. Narayana, BJP has followed the approach of “killing a small snake with a big stick” (literal translation of a Telugu proverb). “When the farming community is camping outside Delhi to protest against the farm bills, the BJP leadership, unable to answer them, has made a beeline to Hyderabad to find some lost pride in communal politics one more time,” Dr. Narayana said on Sunday. TRS working president K.T. Rama Rao has expressed displeasure over educated sections not casting vote. Mr. Rama Rao vented his ire at a meeting convened by industrialists the other day. “The educated sections will engage in tweets, but do not vote. Stay away from the Twitter, Facebook and other social media for a while on December 1 and cast your vote,” he said. The TRS working president asked people to vote for NOTA, “if you don’t like me or the TRS”. (B. Chandrashekhar and M. Rajeev)

The Hindu

2020-11-30

November 30 2020 00:00 IST,TELANGANA