With the objective of winning 16 out of 17 seats in the coming Parliament elections, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) has focussed attention on strengthening its organisational network by appointing district committees.
The TRS is yet to appoint its presidents for the new districts while the bodies of the old and undivided districts were scrapped much before. It effectively meant that the party functioned without district presidents for more than two years. Instead, the TRS experimented with constituency in-charges who were all local MLAs or party leaders who lost in Assembly elections. It took inspiration from a similar system which was successfully followed by the Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh.
The new TRS working president K.T. Rama Rao was said to be credited with the view that appointing new in-charges for the constituencies in the post-Assembly poll scenario now could be counter productive as it might lead to group politics ahead of Parliament elections. Therefore, he was in favour of appointing presidents for all 33 district units of TRS. He reportedly wanted to entrust full time responsibility to leaders who worked efficiently as district in-charges in the past.
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Sources said the TRS lost some key constituencies in the recent Assembly elections due to lack of coordination and differences between leaders. So, Mr. Rama Rao had decided to plug loopholes by having effective leadership at the grass roots level before the Parliament elections. He wanted leaders who enjoyed the confidence of party rank and file as district presidents. In this context, the hunt is on for leaders who worked efficiently in the Assembly elections.
At the same time, the TRS is also focussed on continuing non-local leaders who were constituency in-charges only for Assembly elections. They stayed in the constituencies allotted to them for three months. Giving some of them an extension of term as Parliament constituency in-charges is under the active consideration of Mr. Rama Rao. He had already held consultations with them at the party office here, sources added.
The TRS presently has a 60-member State committee, comprising 20 general secretaries, 30 secretaries and 10 joint secretaries. It also has chairmen for various cells representing, women, youth, students, Scheduled Castes, workers, minorities and Backward Classes. But, the chairmen of SC wing Singi Ravishanker and BC wing Muta Gopal were elected as MLAs.
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The party might find replacements for them, and for TRS president of GHMC -- Mynampalli Hanumantha Rao, who also won.