At the auspicious muhurat of 1.19 pm, when chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao officially renamed the Telangana Rashtra Samithi to Bharat Rashtra Samithi, announcing his foray into national politics, the conference hall inside the Telangana Bhavan in Hyderabad was booming with loud cheers from about 280 TRS legislative and executive members who had been waiting for this day since nearly a decade now.
The podium where KCR stood was shared by his closest confidants: his son KT Rama Rao, nephews Harish Rao and J Santosh Rao, accompanied by a dozen TRS senior leaders, but the striking absence of the party’s lone female face and the chief minister’s daughter K Kavitha has left everyone baffled with just one question— whether all is well within the state’s first family.
Sources within the TRS have told News18 that just an hour before the big launch, Kavitha even spoke to her father KCR for 10 minutes and exchanged greetings. However, there seems to be no clarity on what transpired further which prompted her to stay home while the rest of her family went to Telangana Bhavan. Earlier in the day, she also skipped the Dasara puja held by KCR at his residence Pragathi Bhavan which was attended by KTR’s family and other close relatives.
An otherwise tech-savvy Kavitha also didn’t post a congratulatory message on her social media accounts following the launch of the BRS party.
These developments come as a huge surprise since Kavitha who was the first woman parliamentarian from Telangana until 2019, is perhaps the most prominent face of the TRS as far as New Delhi is concerned. She’s seen as someone who enjoys a wide network of contacts and acceptance owing to her simple personality and sharp oratory skills. It may be recalled that when KCR met a host of opposition leaders in the likes of Stalin, Uddhav Thackeray, Sharad Pawar, HD Deve Gowda, Kavitha had accompanied him everywhere. In fact, it was KCR who had deputed his daughter to initiate talks with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.
Talks of cracks within the TRS grew louder after Kavitha’s name did not feature in the list of 86 leaders deputed by KCR to campaign in Munugode bypolls scheduled on November 3. The star campaigners include KT Rama Rao and Harish Rao who have been assigned Chandur mandal and Marriguda mandal respectively. Surprisingly, seven women leaders including Satyavathi Rathod and Sabitha Indira Reddy have also been asked to hit the ground running, but Kavitha hasn’t been assigned any specific responsibility yet, despite being the leading female face of the TRS, who enjoys enormous support from grassroots-level cadres, especially rural women.
So why Kavitha, who has been instrumental in helping KCR design the roadmap for his national ambitions, is now being pushed away from the limelight?
There is also growing speculation that Kavitha has been left to fend for herself in the backdrop of the Delhi liquor scam case where the BJP has been alleging her direct involvement. On the investigation front, the Enforcement Directorate has found no links to the TRS MLC, but BJP’s continuous attempt to drag her name has elicited no response from the top leadership of Telangana’s ruling party.
As KCR goes all out with BRS, there is a conscious attempt within the party to focus on image-building exercises. Analysts who didn’t wish to be named said Kavitha’s absence added more gravitas to the conjecture that the central leadership of the TRS is distancing itself from all kinds of unwanted controversies and just focusing on countering the BJP on issues of development.
News18 reached out to Kavitha’s office for a comment but no response has been received yet.
Read all the Latest Politics News and Breaking News here
Comments
0 comment