KCR’s journey towards the formation of TRS

Kalvakunta Chandrasekhar Rao, better known as KCR, is all set to become the first Chief Minister of the Telangana state. His party won 63 of the 119 seats in the region.

Sidda Reddy, his college friend, says, “He had great passion for literature and participated regularly in college debates. He had a great craze for films and wanted to pen some scripts. KCR contested college elections in 1974 for the post of president. He always hated radical politics”.

KCR left for Delhi and joined Sanjay Gandhi’s youth Congress in 1975. This was the year when the emergency was imposed. After Sanjay Gandhi’s death, not finding much to grow, he returned to Siddipet. He contested for the post of chairman of a primary agriculture cooperative society and lost.”

In 1982, he joined the newly launched TDP. KCR lost his first elections in Siddipet for the Assembly. But he won in 1985 and then there was no looking back.

“KCR was known in his constituency for getting things moving. He earned a great reputation. He remembers everybody in his constituency by his or her name,” says M Shekar, a senior journalist.

He became the transport minister in 1996 in Chandrababu Naidu’s government. During his tenure as the minister, he wanted to build a 4-km road through a farmland, west of Siddipet. In a short span of three months, KCR convinced many people to donate their land and help build a road under the Janmabhoomi scheme.

During TDP’s second regime, Naidu appointed KCR as the deputy speaker in the Vidhan Sabha. KCR wanted to be included in the state cabinet and believed Naidu would do so as he had played a great role in the takeover of TDP from NTR. But Naidu failed to do so and KCR quit the TDP. He chose Telangana as his weapon for retribution.

He first rebelled against the TDP in May 2000, when the Chandrababu Naidu government hiked the power tariff in the state. KCR, along with other opponents, trained his guns on Naidu. In an open letter, KCR argued that the hike would impact farmers.

This was when KCR started laying strategies for a separate party. He met Gade Innaiah, a former naxal insurgent, who was involved in the Telangana movement but needed financial and political support. After months of discussions, KCR and Inniah decided to join hands and formed the Telangana Rashtra Party (TRP).

But this relation did not last long when Innaiah felt that KCR was into unilateral decision making. He left the party taking 93 members along with him.

In October 2000, KCR met Jayashankar. Jayashankar supported KCR until he died in 2011. The TRS party was founded to fight for a separate Telangana and hope beckoned after smaller states like Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh came into existence. The rest of the course of the party is history.