Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has cautioned Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) leaders against lowering their guard, reminding them of the scathing attack that the Opposition parties had launched on the ruling party.
At a meeting of the TRS Legislature Party that he chaired at Telangana Bhavan on Thursday, he told party legislators that recent independent surveys indicated that the ruling party had a 67 and 52 per cent share of votes in Warangal Lok Sabha and Narayankhed Assembly constituencies, respectively. However, he wanted party leaders to keep the by-elections in the two constituencies in mind and constantly remind people of the welfare-oriented programmes of the TRS Government.
Mr. Rao said this was not the time for the party to be on the defensive and wanted that party leaders and legislators across mandal, Assembly constituency and district levels to counter the criticism heaped on the ruling party by the Opposition, especially over the farm sector crisis and farmers’ suicides.
While doing so, party leaders also had the responsibility of closely monitoring the party’s welfare programmes.
Starting from the Ministers, MLAs, MLCs, MPs and others down the line, there was a strong need for them to be as close to people as they had been around the time of the general elections last year, the party president opined.
On a critical note, he was said to have pointed out that a gap had crept in between the ruling party and the people, over the past 15 months and underscored the need for it to be filled.
He wanted party seniors, especially the Ministers, to launch an in-depth exercise and start identifying names of leaders, to fill nominated positions that had been vacant for ‘far too long’. He also wanted them to prepare lists of names to constitute the party’s district-level committees, without encouraging ‘groupism’.
He was said to have stated that the criteria for selection should be their contribution during the struggle for a separate State, and their service to the party before and after it formed the Government.
Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao, sources pointed out, had told the leaders that shortly after Dasara, he would tour the districts himself, after which he would also undertake a ‘bus yatra’, covering the State, mandal-wise.
This is not the time for the party to be on the defensive, he says at TRS Legislature Party meeting
