KCR wish to be a King-Maker and not King himself?

(Online Desk)

Armed with the massive mandate it got in December assembly polls, the ruling TRS and its chief K Chandrasekhara Rao (KCR) is riding high, claiming all 16 of the 17 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

He is also more than confident of playing a responsible role in installing a ‘national party’ government by cobbling all those regional parties, who in principle opposed to the two national parties – the BJP and Congress.  Interestingly, he also clarifies that he is not in the race for PM’s post, putting to rest that he may shift to national politics, handing over the baton to his son K T Rama Rao to head the state.

But, many political analysts feel the polling pattern will be different from the assembly to Lok Sabha.  While the local factors matters most in case of assembly, then the national issues takes centre stage as far as Lok Sabha elections are concerned.  Whether that pattern is followed by the electorate in the new Telangana state one has to wait and see.

Perhaps, KCR’s confidence of bagging all the 16 also on the basis of 11 out of 17 it could win in 2014.  In all fairness, his expectation of winning another 5 seats, looks reasonable.   Simply because, the people who have given massive mandate to his party for his good work done during last five years, was appreciated in December polls.  How can people change their opinion in less than four month, may be his confidence.

But, the senior BJP leaders and others would not like to accept.  They say, at least 15-20 per cent of the literates, who can understand and appreciate the good work done by Modi government, cannot afford to ignore and reward him suitably.  Whether in case of economic turn-around or national security matters, the BJP-led NDA government headed by Narendra Modi has shown some spine to the world, especially to  its neighbors, that India no more ‘a weak’ nation and cannot take anything lying down.

Such confidence was evident from the senior BJP leader and former Union Minister, Bandaru Dattatreya, has thrown challenge to the KCR and his siblings that he would take to political sanyas, if his party fails to win more than 300 under Modi’s leadership and form the government, besides improving its numbers in Telangana.

Similarly, the state Congress too is confident to win few seats though it could not reconcile from the humiliating defeat it had faced in assembly polls not so long ago.  Their confidence borne out of inexperienced candidates fielded by the TRS, besides the ‘game changer’ party’s ‘Manifesto’ brought out by their party president only couple of days ago.

In that backdrop, one has to wait and see whether the TRS bags all the 16 LS seats or retains 11 it won in 2014 or concede few to their opponents.  Political analysts feel the Congress and BJP set to win at least half a dozen seats among themselves and push TRS to single digit figure.