Strategic Silence or a Political Deal?
For quite some time now, KCR has been maintaining strategic silence during key moments in the T-movement. Till date, no one was able to define KCRs strategic silence. After he pressured all his party’s MLAs and MLCs to resign, a series of anti-TRS events have occured.
- Congress withdrew from the JAC.
- Damodar Reddy and Mutyam Reddy failed to resign.
- Police lathi charged the OU students to stop them from taking out a rally.
- Manmohan Singh announced that a consensus should be reached for Telangana to be formed.
During all these events, KCR remained silent until recently when he attacked Chandrababu Naidu for letting his party workers attack the T-lawyers. The commonality among all the events that KCR did not raise his voice against is that these were acts by the Congress party. Naturally, the question arises whether KCR was indeed maintaining a strategic silence or did he strike a deal with the Congress party.
The ill-timing of the resignations let Congress and TDP MLAs stick to their positions. The biggest surprise was the assembly sessions. Before the resignations, nobody expected the sessions to be this peaceful. But now, for obvious reasons, MLAs of Congress and TDP are not even mentioning Telangana in the assembly. TRS was the only party that would have raised a huge hue and cry about Telangana and created a major trouble for the Congress party. Surely, KCR would have known this and would not have wanted to miss this opportunity. Yet, he chose to make his party MLAs to resign in haste.
The Chalo Assembly rally by the students to demand T-MLA resignations has resulted in a police lathi charge. Why didn’t KCR raise a voice against the police? Here, there could be two equally valid reasons. Initially, KCR used students for his political agitations. But he didn’t want students to take control of the T-movement. This is probably the main reason why KCR stayed away from the rally. The other reason could be that KCR did not want to make anti-Congress statements.
When Congress MLAs Damodar Reddy and Mutyam Reddy failed to resign even after a trip to Delhi, KCR remained silent. He continued his silence even when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that a consensus is a must for Telangana to be created. The Prime Minister’s announcement brings T-issue back to square one which is a major setback to KCRs goal of a separate Telangana. Yet, KCR chose to remain silent.
Now, there has been an interesting turn of events in the Congress party. Congress party is contemplating fielding Srikanth Chari’s father as a contestant from Siddipet. For those of you trying to remember Srikanth Chari, he is the student who immolated himself for Telangana. If Srikanth Chari’s father contests in the by-elections, chances are that other contestants will not even get deposits. Will KCR let this happen to his nephew, Harish Rao? Will he continue his strategic silence?
http://voiceofnimmagadda.blogspot.com/2010/03/strategic-silence-or-political-deal.html
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