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IS THE TELANGANA CAUSE TEMPORARILY STALLED?
By M H AHSAN
For those fervently hoping for a separate state of Telangana, the revelations by alleged passport forger Rasheed could not have come at a worse time. With his one confessional statement, Rasheed has put the reputation of the entire Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) at stake. And with TRS currently being the torch-bearer of Telangana, the scandal has the potential of derailing the movement, at least temporarily. “If leaders of the movement are found to have such dubious records and who thought nothing of perpetrating such crimes, what credibility will the movement have?” asked Ashok Kumar, a corporate executive.
For the record, Rasheed has not named TRS supremo K Chandrasekhar Rao. But the TRS boss, in a rearguard action, had expelled his deputy A Narendra a week ago for the latter’s alleged involvement. That does not really help: Nearly half-adozen MPs and MLAs of the small regional party have already been named by the passport racketeers.
But what has made Telangana supporters furious is that the names cropping up are mostly of those from TRS and a few from Telugu Desam party (TDP). “Politicians have the same colour and hue. How come there is no Congress politician involved?” asked a student of Osmania University, the hotbed of Telangana politics. He wondered whether this was a well-orchestrated effort to discredit the TRS and dismember the Telangana cause.
Whether this is an effort to discredit the TRS leadership or not, nobody believes that those named are absolutely innocent.
Political analysts aver that members of a small party such as the TRS are more susceptible to influences from professional ‘crooks’ like Rasheed. “Small formations like the TRS many reincarnate or change its avatar every few years. Members do not believe that they have a long-term future and want to make the most of their five-year term,” said a senior politician on condition of anonymity. He added: “Small parties run around a few personalities and if they are game for such activities, then the small MLAs and MPs are also sucked in.”
TRS is known as a party without much internal organisation or discipline. Despite its recent ancestry, the party has been hit by severe dissidence. Many of the party’s elected representatives don’t have any base to speak of, having come to office on the coat tails of a Telangana whirlwind.
The theory that it was a strategic move to destroy the TRS becomes clear from the fact that detailed documents about the passport-related misdemeanours of those named by Rasheed were sent to all newspaper offices a fortnight ago. The documents also contained photocopies of the forged passports.
“Obviously, only someone with a lot of resources and access could have put together these papers,” remarked an analyst. The widely distributed documents became the basis for public discussion and ultimately the government agencies acted on them.
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INSIDE STORY
