Why the agitation?
Over a year after a violence-marred agitation, the farming community of Kapus in Andhra Pradesh, constituting about 20% of the population, has again hit the road demanding its inclusion in notified Backward Classes to be able to get reservation in government jobs and educational institutions.
In an attempt to revive the agitation in support of the long-pending demand, the community’s leading light, former Minister Mudragada Padmanabham, gave a call to his supporters to join him in a Chalo Amaravati (the new capital of Andhra Pradesh) padayatra from his residence at Kirlampudi in East Godavari district on July 27.
A similar call by him on January 31, 2016, led to large-scale violence in Tuni, also in East Godavari district, when the agitators torched a train and two police stations, leaving a number of people and policemen injured.
In asking people to come to Tuni in thousands and lay siege to the rail track, he has drawn inspiration from the Gujjars and the Patels. The once smitten twice shy Telugu Desam Party government and the Andhra Pradesh police did not take any chances and kept him under house arrest till August 3.
What role did Chiranjeevi play?
The demand for quota for the Kapus has been there for more than two decades now, and from time to time, the issue has been used effectively by ambitious Kapu leaders and political parties to garner votes from this numerically strong community.
In 2008, the popular actor-turned-politician K. Chiranjeevi, who belongs to the Kapu community, formed the Praja Rajyam.
He wanted to make a political impact, riding on the sentiment that none from the community could rise to the level of Chief Minister though the population was larger than the Reddys and the Kammas.
The chief ministership had been shared by these two communities for a major part of the last 60 years. But Mr. Chiranjeevi could win just 18 of the 294 seats in the 2009 Assembly elections; his party merged with the Congress in 2011 and he himself entered the Rajya Sabha.
The Kapus were disappointed with his move.
What did Naidu promise?
It was in this background that the first elections after bifurcation of the State into Telangana and the residual Andhra Pradesh were held in 2014. In his bid to stage a comeback, after being in the Opposition for a decade, Telugu Desam Party chief N. Chandrababu Naidu promised all things to all, from crop loan waiver for farmers to quotas for the Kapus within six months of coming to power. Kapus, a sizeable chunk of whom were voters of the Congress, shifted their loyalties and helped Mr. Naidu return to power. Three years on, there has been no announcement on the quota. After last year’s violence and Mr. Padmanabham’s fast, the government constituted the Manjunatha Commission to look into the demands for quota by the Kapus and other communities.
What about the Manjunatha panel?
There is no word yet from the Commission though it has been touring the State and taking representations. The delay appears to have come in handy for Mr. Padmanabham and the main Opposition YSRCP to hit out at the government and get some political mileage.
The YSRCP and the Congress have extended support to Mr. Padmanabham’s movement for reservation. Their frequent consultations led the ruling Telugu Desam Party to see a conspiracy against the government. In Andhra’s political firmament, Mr. Padmanabham is seen as a “maverick” who has switched loyalties from one party to another, starting with the Janata Party in 1978 to the Telugu Desam Party and then to the Congress and even the Bharatiya Janata Party. He resigned from the Cabinet of N.T. Rama Rao and started his own outfit, Praja Rakshana Party, but wound it up. He has not been contesting elections since 2014 but sees an opportunity in the Kapus’ grouse of being denied quotas.
K. Venkateshwarlu
