By the evening of November 15, the last date for candidates to withdraw their nominations, 44 candidates in Gajwel, and another 38 in Kamareddy could not be stopped from contesting against the chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) in both his constituencies. The ruling party Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) convinced 70 rebel candidates (a mix of independents and breakaways from BRS) in Gajwel, and another 19 in Kamareddy to back off, pacifying them that their concerns would be looked into. At least 145 candidates had filed their nomination papers in Gajwel and 92 in Kamareddy to contest against the ‘Father of Telangana’.

PREMIUM

At the nub of all of this rebellion are intense emotions — disgruntlement, disappointment, anger, and fear — that cannot be dismissed as anti-incumbency. Vottem Raju’s farmlands close to Gajwel were acquired for the Mallanna Sagar Reservoir Project and he is dissatisfied with the compensation. Ravi Yadav is upset about the rampant sale of liquor in Kirana shops because his young boys from his village have taken to a life of indulgence. About an hour and a half away, at Kamareddy, Mahesh and Rajasekhar have been waiting for 10 years with B.Ed and M.Ed degrees in tow to be placed in the village schools that KCR spent over ₹7,000 crore on as part of the Mana Ooru-Mana Badi (‘Our Village, Our School’) programme. The aim was to strengthen the infrastructure and quality of education in the state’s government schools, but recruitment is still lagging. As of August, the government recruited a little over 5,000 teachers when more than 22,000 vacancies had to be filled in the primary sections alone. The state’s state of finances is to be blamed for the poor enrollment.

“Polls are about images. Polls are perceptions. What this tells us is that KCR is not doing great on both fronts,” said Professor PL Vishweshwar Rao, vice-president of the Telangana Jana Samithi, a party of intellectuals and pro-Telangana activists founded by former Osmania University Professor M. Kodandaram. Rao was closely associated with the statehood movement and said that such strong sentiments could trigger a political blowback for chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao, popularly referred to as KCR.

The rebels and independents standing up to the CM is less a sign of their invincibility and more of their unwillingness to opt out of an already tough fight between the CM, his bête noir Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Eatala Rajender, and Congress’s Narasa Reddy.

Gajwel

Gajwel has all the markings of a VIP constituency. Its four-laned glistening roads are smooth as marble, the median’s tall shrubs have their stems evenly trimmed and trunks colour-coordinated, the maternity hospital and the two-town police station give out the smell of a fresh coat of paint, and all shopkeepers display their boards in English rather than Telugu. Vegetable sellers and flower vendors also have their Paytm QR codes displayed next to the mounds of tomatoes and neatly laid rows of jasmine. Yet, despite the visible development, the town’s greatest privilege — the CM is their elected representative — is no longer worn with pride. KCR’s multi-acre farmhouse in Eravelli is guarded by gunmen and villagers find it difficult to access him, residents say.

“Why should we vote for the same person every time?” asked Seku Sattayya who comes from the Voddera sub-caste of the backward classes. He breaks boulders, converts them into gravel, and sells them for a living, but the Mallanna Sagar, a two-year-old man-made reservoir with a capacity of 50 tmcft has put his livelihood in jeopardy. “Since the project came up two years ago, I am unable to go to the hill anymore. Many of the boulders have capsized into the water,” he said. He now does odd jobs at the gram panchayat office to earn. The ₹7,400 crore ‘Bahubali-scale’ reservoir was built to irrigate fields and provide drinking water to the Hyderabad metropolitan region. Around 14 villages were evacuated — each had fertile fields of 2,000 to 3,000 acres.

The reservoir brought piped drinking water to every household but at a cost. Farmers like 70-year-old Sunku Malliah lament the loss of their agricultural land. He received a mere ₹8 lakh as compensation, he said. “The assigned lands given to us during Indira Gandhi’s time have all been seized. What farm loan waiver will the CM provide after taking away our lands,” Malliah said. “The CM is now selling each acre for one crore is what we hear,” Vottem Raju, a resident of Etigadda Krishnapura, one of the 14 villages that got submerged with the reservoir’s construction added.

A few kilometres away, in Komatibanda village, 50-year-old Jyothi shares her grievances cautiously. Jyothi sells chikki, and country liquor —discreetly. “I spent about five to six lakhs sending my daughter to Hyderabad for coaching to appear for the Group IV Telangana State Public Services Commission. After she appeared for the exam, we heard that it would be conducted again next year. Now, I can’t even marry my daughter off now after having spent so much money.”

In February this year, when the Telangana State Public Service Commission conducted recruitment tests to fill vacancies, several papers got leaked by miscreants and the government decided to reschedule all examinations from Group I to Group IV. More than 25,000 students and aspirants were affected with the exams being indefinitely postponed.

KCR’s government promised a job for each household when he returned to power in 2018 and vowed to fill 200,000 vacancies in the state government at different levels.

“It is this disgruntlement with their “Pedda Koduku” (elder son), as KCR was once referred to, which makes the rebel farmers stand against KCR,” says Susarla Nagesh, a political commentator, who has been tracking elections in what was then Andhra Pradesh, since 1979. “These are not ordinary independent candidates. They are to be viewed as project-affected victims,” said J Nagaraju, activist and commentator, who has toured this region extensively. Gajwel has a majority of voters from the Mudiraj community that Eatala Rajender belongs to. Gajwel has 228,000 voters.

Kamareddy

If farmer distress is at the heart of the independents’ contest in Gajwel, anger and a sense of abandonment run deep in Kamareddy, the second constituency chosen by the chief minister to contest from.

“KCR promised the people of Gajwel that he would not give them up in case he wins in both places. So, are we then voting for him only for a by-election to be conducted in another six months?” asked a school headmaster, who did not wish to be named. He is not sure of the state government employees’ support of KCR because “It is the first time in my 33 years of service across regimes that we have been seeing a delay in the credit of our salaries. In the last three years, I have not received my salary on time. Because it is the month of elections and also of Diwali, we received our salaries by November 5; otherwise, we have been receiving them only by the 12th.”

Salaries are usually credited between the first and third of the month. The headmaster is hoping for the BJP candidate from the constituency, Venkataramana Reddy, to win, because he neither distributes money nor promises liquor while asking for votes.

Residents of other villages in Kamareddy — Lingapur, Chinnamallareddy, Tekriyal, Adloor, Machareddy, Domakunda, Bikanur, and Bibipet — are also hoping for the same outcome. The villages and 15 others were going to be taken over by the state government for an industrial zone. Farmers were up in arms against the proposal, and the state eventually recalled it after the high court intervened in February.

“It was Venkataramana Reddy who fought for us. He set aside his BJP scarf, travelled by foot to each village, and spoke to us about how we should fight to save our lands. Otherwise, we would have all lost our livelihoods,” Manchala Harish Yadav said. The farmer from Lingapur has a two-acre cotton farm. They view Telangana Pradesh Congress president Revanth Reddy as a politician who is more keen to take on KCR than help them.

Former MLC and Professor of Political Science at the Osmania University Prof Nageshwar Rao said, “Kamareddy is to KCR what Wayanad is to Rahul Gandhi. Revanth picked Kamareddy to prove a point in slaying a giant just like Smriti Irani picked Amethi. It is a fight amongst two non-locals and a little-known, yet strong local candidate. It can throw up many surprises.”