It fought outside with the people for a separate Telangana, it fought with its own party and it also fought within to surrender the advantage to K. Chandrashekhar Rao as the Union government announced the formation of a separate State.
This is the irony of the century-old Congress party that lost out to the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) in the race to power in 2014 despite delivering the 60-year-old dream of Telangana. And a decade later, it is still not completely confident of grabbing its chances now. The nine-year political journey has been bumpy with the defection of its majority MLAs into the ruling party in two successive terms. Yet, it is still the principal opposition and a force to reckon with despite all the efforts to wipe it out from the State political map.
The debate on why the Congress lost in 2014 has different interpretations ranging from a compulsion to earning political mileage while delivering the new State. It was accused of bowing to the pressures of the political parties than the sincere intent in keeping its promise of bifurcating the State. When the dream became a reality, people believed that it wanted political mileage more than siding with the cause.
The faith factor certainly missed somewhere as the Congress MPs, who were the face of the agitation in New Delhi and Parliament for over three years grabbing all the headlines, lost by huge margins at the hustings. It was a surprise that the most vocal voices of Congress had actually lost, while those who maintained some balance while attached to the movement were elected with handsome majority.
In an emotionally surcharged atmosphere such as the Telangana statehood movement, narratives played a huge role. Despite just two MPs in Parliament, KCR created the narrative that he was the lone voice of Telangana, while the Congressmen, despite having the numbers, failed to create their own. This was one of the defining factors of the movement. Instead of pulling KCR into its trap, the party always fell into his plans. He literally pulled the agitation from Congress’ hands to keep it under his control. The reason perhaps was the fighting within the Congress.
The overconfidence with which Congress approached the 2014 elections proved to be a major disaster. There were few on the ground to exploit the sentiment and reach out to people seeking their mandate, unlike KCR who addressed 108 meetings selling the dream of a new Telangana.
The Congress leaders were in New Delhi more lobbying for the Chief Minister’s post than ensuring that the party won first, under the impression that the election had already been won. That the TRS scraped through the bare majority of 63 seats itself is an indication that the party did not have a smooth ride right from the beginning.
Mr. KCR sweated it out on the ground and it proved when TRS candidates with no political background emerged victorious solely because of him. The small margins in several constituencies could have thrown a different picture had the Congress concentrated on the ground. The lack of a singular popular face for the Congress for the people to choose from was another nail in the coffin. All the leaders confined themselves to New Delhi or their respective constituencies and couldn’t throw up a leader who could be the party’s face.
One of the grave mistakes of Congress was to surrender the powerful slogan ‘Jai Telangana’ to the TRS. The impact of that slogan on millions of people cutting across age, sex, class, and religious barriers was unimaginable bonding them as a collective voice of statehood aspiration. Telangana was an emotion, and when such an emotive voice is taken over by the TRS, the Congress looked helpless and it continues to rue over it.
