Jana Sena's Pawan Kalyan scripts tale of two states

Hyderabad: Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan has always remained inscrutable. As he belongs to the distinguished breed of scholars, a rare occurrence either in films or in politics, people tend to spend a lot of time trying to read between the lines each time he makes a statement that is in conflict with his earlier one.

They range from innocuous statements like where he is born and where he is brought to the more complex issues like the Special Category Status for the state and his relations with the chief ministers of the two states.

Though he was probably the first to fire salvos at the Centre immediately after Arun Jaitley delivered a sugar-coated package to AP in September in 2016 in lieu of Special Category Status, later he lost the initiative to YSRC chief Jagan Mohan Reddy who had been arguing that Special Category Status is non-negotiable.

The question of why he let the initiative pass had lingered for a long time and then people gave up with whatever explanations they could come up with. Especially when Special Category Status has become a holy cow from which one could draw as much electoral milk as possible, depending on one's strength.

Even his long sabbaticals also make one wonder whether he is serious about his political intentions or whether he was doing some serious home work to emerge as a leader of erudition to find solution to the mundane problems of the people.

After remaining incommunicado for a long time, Pawan Kalyan broke surface at Kondagattu in January this year, paying respects to Lord Anjaneya Swamy for saving his life when he came in contact with a power cable during his campaign in 2014 elections. The name he has given to his tour of the two states which began from Kondagattu – “Chal chalore chal” - also lacked seriousness and indicated that the tour was some kind of a sight-seeing visit.

In the few days that followed, his statements on Telangana gave enough grist to the speculation mill which worked over time on whether he was working in cahoots with Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and his Andhra counterpart N Chandrababu Naidu as he had declared that his policy in both Telugu states was conciliation and not confrontation.

This knocked out much of the stuffing in his campaign as an impression became gaining ground that he wants to act more as a king-maker and not rise as a challenger to either of them, mainly in Andhra Pradesh. He gave enough indications that he might be locking horns with the BJP at the Centre but did not give any hints that in doing so he would emerge as a leader of substance to occupy political space in AP or Telangana.

When touring Telangana, he said though he was born in Andhra, Telangana was the state which had given him rebirth to him and therefore his commitment to the Telangana soil would remain unshakable. After opposing Telangana movement prior to the bifurcation of the state in 2014, he is now saying that Jai Telangana slogan was as pure and as virtuous as Vandemataram.

Then visiting Anantapur in AP, he said he would serve AP till his last breath as it is the state that had given him birth. He said he would remain indebted to Andhras for ever which means that he would remain in AP and be faithful to the people without whose help he could not have become what he is now. That had left the people raking their brain whether it is some kind of double-speak, intending to please people in both the states, or whether there is any special reason for saying so since he is a man of letters.

When it came to Special Category Status, he batted for it initially with a loud appeal to everyone to call the BJP's bluff that package was better and even described the package as two rotten laddus that were handed over to the people. At Kakinada, while addressing a meeting in 2016, Pawan Kalyan even tried to drive a wedge between North and South India, accusing the Centre, which is peopled predominantly with those from the North was showing a step-motherly treatment to South. But even that campaign stopped there, as he did not raise it subsequently.

He had said if anyone could get Special Category Status to AP, it was he as he entered public life not for power but only to question injustice. But later on, he said he did not know what SCS is and constituted a committee to study the injustice done to the state and brief him accordingly which it did. He then said that he had no intention of organising protests at Delhi but would continue to demand Special Category Status. He however did not announce any programme of action.

By: R Prtihvi Raj