TRS popularity on the wane: BJP

​Hyderabad: Telangana State unit of the BJP claims that the popularity of the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) is fast eroding among the rural folk across the State. The party found out this during its State leadership visits to about 2,000 villages under Palle Nidra Programme (PNP). The brewing discontent among Dalits and backward classes in rural areas was visible when they openly voiced their woes during the party programmes across the State, it said.

The party leadership feels that this is one among the rallying points for the party to consolidate itself among these sections. “Because their issues were neither addressed by the government machinery nor the TRS leadership in the districts,” said a senior BJP leader.

BJP State president K Laxman said for example, Tummaloor village in Maheswaram mandal in Ranga Reddy had been recognised as the best village panchayat. But, the woman sarpanch of the panchayat had to continue to face troubles from the ruling party leaders, as she happened to be from the BJP, he added.

Similar was the fate of the sarpanches of Borapet, Manikonda, R K Puram and many others as the ruling party adopted it as an official policy to ensure those elected from other parties failed in all respects. 

However, some village heads had ventured to insist on the district administration and the people’s representatives for the resale of 14th Finance Commission funds to take up works. The funds were released only to remit towards pending power bills. 

After that, they could not get single paise from the FCF funds. In some cases, either the district administration slapped notices against the village heads or their cheque withdrawal power had been suspended. When some other village heads demanded implementation of the schemes, they were told either to join in the ruling party or their pleas had been ignored both by the administration and the people's representatives, he said.

Further, the MLAs and MPs did not release single paise from the constituency development funds if the villages were not headed by their party sarpanches, he added. Many out of around 600 BJP sarpanches were left with no other option but to join in the TRS for not able to withstand the pressure mounted on them.

This development did not go down well with the village folk in rural areas resulting in the discontent growing among them towards the ruling party. The party now wants to consolidate support of people from SC, ST and BC sections in rural areas during its Bus Yatra scheduled to be launched in June this year. 

In the first phase, the Yatra will cover 50 Assembly constituencies followed by an equal or more number of constituencies in the second phase. The main objective was to touch every mandal and village in each of the Assembly constituencies to garner support of the people from rural base, said Laxman.