When Dame Luck smiles on someone, nothing on this earth can stop the whirring of the wheel of fortune. After a short political hiatus, former APCC President D Srinivas was endowed with the position of Rajya Sabha member.
Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) supremo and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao chose former minister and senior TRS leader B Lakshmikantha Rao of Karimnagar district and the former Congress strongman Dharmapuri Srinivas for representing his party in the Upper House.
It was a dream come true for the former APCC chief who actually has been nursing the ambition of going to Rajya Sabha since 2009 after he lost the Assembly elections. However, it did not materialize. But Srinivas was chosen for the legislative council by the Congress. He became the Congress floor leader in the Council and served until the end of his term, also as the Leader of the Opposition in Telangana council.
After his retirement, he began making overtures to join the ruling TRS. Finally, he chose an auspicious day to communicate his desire to the Chief Minister. A political heavy weight like D Srinivas would always be of great help to the TRS, considering his connections in Delhi.
D Srinivas, aka DS, was inducted into the TRS and KCR bestowed the position of Advisor to the State Government on inter-State affairs with a Cabinet rank. Srinivas enjoyed the positioning, but not the position. Meanwhile, he has been convincing KCR that it is imperative for the CMto nominate a senior leader like him to the Rajya Sabha.
The Chief Minister too was convinced, considering the stature of DS.
Capt B Lakshmikantha Rao has been a KCR loyalist ever since the TRS was floated. He stood by KCR all through. Lakshmikantha Rao is the nephew of former Prime Minister the late P V Narasimha Rao. His name has been doing the rounds as the first choice of the Chief Minister, ever since the election mood for Rajya Sabha has set in.
Though KCR’s distant relative Damodar Rao, who runs Namaste Telangana and T- News, the newspaper and TV channel respectively, in which KCR’s family has interests, threw his hat into the rink, KCR somehow did not choose him.
The Chief Minister surprised everyone by choosing Fareeduddin, å Minister in the YS Rajasekhara Reddy Government, to replace D Srinivas. By choosing a minority to the Upper House in the State, KCR silenced all his critics by perfectly balancing the community equations too. While Lakshmikantha Rao is a Brahmin, D Srinivas is a BC and Fareeduddin is a Muslim.
The announcement without much ado just indicated how strong and unchallenged a leader KCR is in the TRS and the Telangana Government.
