As the cobwebs seem to have cleared over the doubts of its resurgence, the Congress wants to go for the kill like never before.
Published Sep 06, 2023 | 10:41 PM ⚊ Updated Sep 07, 2023 | 10:40 AM
Congress leaders survey CWC meeting preparations in Hyderabad on Wednesday, 6 September, 2023. (Supplied)
For the Telangana Congress, hosting the maiden meeting of the recently reconstituted CWC on 16 September and its extended meeting the next day in Hyderabad has come to be a momentous occasion.
The top brass — Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Mallikarjun Kharge, Priyanka, and others — will be sitting in Hyderabad scripting a strategy to win the elections to five state Assemblies, including Telangana, later this year and use the momentum created in the process to vanquish BJP and ride to power at the Centre in general elections next year.
Now a sense of deja vu is prevailing in the Congress leaders in the state as they look into the party’s glorious past in the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh.
Its resounding victory in Karnataka seems to have done the trick. The BJP, which was very aggressive till the outcome of the Karnataka elections, began losing steam rapidly thereon.
With Telangana Chief Minister and BRS chief K Chandrashekar Rao toning down his attack on the BJP and the saffron party also taking the sting out of its campaign against the BRS by removing Bandi Sanjay Kumar as president of the Telangana BJP, an impression began gaining ground that there might be some kind of a covert understanding between them, roughly on the lines of “I scratch your back in the Assembly elections, and you scratch mine in the Lok Sabha polls”.
As the cobwebs seem to have cleared over the doubts of its resurgence, the Congress wants to go for the kill like never before.
The very fact that the BRS always trains its guns at the Congress and not the BJP is considered an indication that the KCR sees the Congress as its main political rival in Telangana.
KCR’s change of tack has seen in the Congress leaders the first stirrings of hope that they might after all be able to surprise KCR at the hustings.
After announcing the decision of the party in Delhi to hold the CWC meeting in Hyderabad, party general secretary KC Venugopal arrived in Hyderabad on Wednesday, 6 September, and took stock of the situation ahead of the big event.
Accompanied by Telangana in charge Manikrao Thakre, TPCC president A Revanth Reddy, MP N Uttam Kumar Reddy, and other leaders, he visited the Gachibowli stadium and an open ground at Thukkuguda, venues for public meetings.
The Congress — the main constituent of the INDIA alliance — hopes that the momentum created by the Karnataka elections will continue and the party might retain Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, and win Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, and Mizoram, which are going to the polls in November-December this year.
According to sources, the CWC would be firing its first salvo against the BJP, which is pursuing an aggressive Hindutva agenda that includes the recent signals that the party wants to rename India to “Bharat” and also bring about simultaneous elections, which the Congress says is an indication that the BJP was afraid of the INDIA alliance.
“It is a sign that the BJP is panicking,” said Venugopal recently while announcing the dates for the CWC meeting in Hyderabad.
It is expected that the CWC and its extended meeting would also decide on setting the house in order not only in Telangana, where it is a house divided despite the unity facade that it acquired of late on account of elections, but also in Rajasthan, where Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and CWC member Sachin Pilot have serious differences.
The TPCC made a request to the party high command recently to consider Hyderabad as the venue for the first CWC meeting after Mallikarjun Kharge took over the reins of the party, which it readily accepted.
Reviewed various grounds today with AICC General Secretary shri @kcvenugopalmp ji for the public meeting to be held on September 17th along with shri @Manikrao_INC ji, @BhattiCLP garu,@UttamINC garu,@mpponguleti garu,@SampathKumarINC garu,@AnjanKumarMP garu and others. pic.twitter.com/VyPaTnWxsi
— Revanth Reddy (@revanth_anumula) September 6, 2023
Now the party leaders and workers are upbeat over the Congress carnival. They hope for the return of the glorious days of the Congress between 2004 and 2009 and the troublesome years between 2009 and 2014, though it was in power on account of the sudden demise of Rajasekhara Reddy in a helicopter crash and the raging Telangana movement, protagonists of which blamed the Andhra leaders for the ills of Telangana region.
It was in 2006 when the CWC meeting and the AICC plenary were held in Hyderabad last. The party was in an upswing then, with the Congress led by late YS Rajasekhara Reddy breaking the vice-like grip of TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu on the state and steamrolling to power two years earlier in 2004.
Those days of turbulence are a mere blur now, with the party leaders looking forward to the resurgence of the Congress in the state after being in the doghouse for nine long years when KCR usurped power from the Congress in 2014 and became much stronger in the 2018 elections.
That the Congress has a special liking for Hyderabad needs no emphasis. In 2004 when the UPA came to power at the Centre, the contribution of the AP Congress was 29 Lok Sabha seats (14th Lok Sabha). In 2009, when the UPA did an encore, the contribution grew to 33 (15th Lok Sabha).
The Congress’ fortunes went into a tailspin in 2014 as Narendra Modi emerged as some kind of a supernova at the Centre.
The Congress in Telangana, too, suffered as it realised that it had burnt its fingers by gambling that gifting Telangana would ensure its victory — at least in Telangana.
In Andhra Pradesh, as expected, the party was hung, drawn, and quartered for what people considered a great betrayal. Now the party does not exist anymore in Andhra Pradesh.
Meanwhile, though the Congress gifted a separate state to the people of Telangana, KCR threw his oar in and walked away with the electoral cake as the Telangana Congress looked on helplessly.
