From Jala Drushyam to Jana Drishyam

From Jala Drushyam to Jana Drishyam
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Highlights

A very few were present when Kalvakuntla Chandrashekar Rao on this very day in 2001 threw up his resignation papers relinquishing the Deputy Speaker and MLA posts which he held in the then Telugu Desam government, and floated Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) at ‘Jala Drushyam’ in Hyderabad.

TRS CELEBRATES 15TH FORMATION DAY today

Khammam: A very few were present when Kalvakuntla Chandrashekar Rao on this very day in 2001 threw up his resignation papers relinquishing the Deputy Speaker and MLA posts which he held in the then Telugu Desam government, and floated Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) at ‘Jala Drushyam’ in Hyderabad.

Especially after witnessing the way in which the 1969 agitation for ‘Separate Telangana’ was fizzled out, nobody in his wildest dreams could have imagined that 13 years down the line the little spark triggered by the TRS would one day turn into a raging fire paving way for the region’s most cherished dream–formation of Telangana.

Sitting alongside, the separate Telangana ideologue Prof K Jayashankar and some other die-hard supporters of Telangana, the frail-looking KCR announced the arrival of his party saying: “People can stone us to death, if the TRS disbands the agitation midway like some leaders who doused off the movement in 1971 for vested interests.”

In the first election it faced in 2004, the TRS in alliance with the Congress won 26 MLA and 5 MP seats. KCR resigned to his ministry in 2006 after the UPA government did not show any serious interest in respecting the decades old demand for Telangana state. Later in April 2008, the TRS also walked out of the State government in protest against the delay in Telangana formation. In the by-election, the TRS could retain only seven MLA and two Lok Sabha seats.

During this period, the TRS faced a tempest of situation when the State government led by the Congress allegedly used all kinds of inducements to split the TRS. In 2009 elections, the ‘Grand Alliance’ with the TDP, CPI and CPM did not yield the desired result for the TRS as the party ended up with just 10 MLA and two MP seats.

KCR’s decision to resort on to fast-unto-death demanding separate State on November 29, 2009 was the turning point for the TRS. After he was arrested and jailed in Khammam prison, the movement spread like wildfire with students, employees and many a social fora plunging into the agitation. The whole of Telangana region came to a standstill forcing the UPA government to announce that the process of statehood for Telangana would be initiated on December 9, 2009.

However, it was not the end of movement as the UPA government was forced to backtrack on its decision and announced Sri Krishna Commission to resolve the issue with the pressure exerted by the Andhra leaders. Back to square one, the TRS brought all political forces in Telangana region together to form the Telangana JAC with Prof Kodandaram as its chairman.

Several agitations like ‘Million March’ and Sakala Janula Samme forced the UPA government to start the statehood process in July 2013 before passing the AP State Reorganisation Act-2014 in both houses of Parliament in Feb 2014. The rest is history with the TRS, which emerged victorious by winning 63 of the 119 Assembly seats and 11 of the 17 Lok Sabha seats in 2014 General Elections, taking the cudgels of the governance with KCR as Chief Minister of the 29th State of the country-Telangana.

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