Telangana Polls: TRS and Congress-led Alliance Under-represent Women and OBC Community

With less than three weeks left for campaigning for assembly elections, all the key political parties in Telangana have finally announced their final lists of the contesting candidates. But, the inclusion of minorities and women continued to be underrepresented in the state, as reflected in the distribution of seats by either K Chandrasekhar Rao’s Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) or by Congress-led alliance.

CPI(M)-led Bahujan Left Front (BLF), however, set an example by giving representation to nearly 50 per cent backward caste candidates to fight the elections, and fielded a transwoman candidate, first time in the history of the country.

M Chandramukhi, a trans-persons’ rights activist, is representing BLF from Goshamahal assembly constituency. Chandramukhi is pitted against TRS candidate Prem Singh Rathod and sitting MLA and BJP candidate Raja Singh, who is known for his controversial communal statements.

Backward Caste Candidates under-represented by TRS and Prajakutami

After dissolving the state assembly on September 6, TRS began its election campaign immediately, and announced its first list of candidates on the same day. Since then, TRS party’s leaders have been busy meeting several caste leaders to obtain their support. Reportedly, in Gajwel, caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s constituency, two separate meetings with Yadav and Padmashali community (both OBC communities) were held by TRS leaders in October. On the other hand, TRS party has selected less than 30 OBC candidates for the December elections, leaving more than 50 per cent seats to the candidates hailing from upper castes including Velamas, Reddys and Khammas.

Similar is the case with Prajakutami, an alliance comprising of Congress contesting in 94 seats, Telugu Desam Party (14), Professor Kodandaram’s newly floated Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS) (8) and CPI (3). Of the 94 seats, Congress gave representation to only 21 OBC candidates, while giving 33 seats to candidates from Reddy community.

BJP, which is also contesting from all the constituencies, and with little presence in Telangana, limited OBC candidates to below 30.

Miryalaguda Constituency

Self-proclaimed OBC leader in the state, R Krishnaiah has finally fielded his candidature from Congress for Miryalaguda constituency. Caste leader Krishnaiah became an MLA (from LB Nagar constituency) on TDP ticket in 2014 assembly elections. As the election season began in the state, Krishanaiah was in news, as he was on a spree of meeting all key parties including the Congress and the BLF. Earlier, he announced that he would contest from Bahujan Left Front, but ended up joining Congress on November 18 evening. He is pitted against CPI(M) candidate Julakanti Rangareddy and TRS candidate N Bhaskar Rao in Miryalaguda.

Rangareddy, CPI(M) candidate from Miryalaguda is hopeful that the poor, SCs, STs, OBCs and minorities in the state would prefer BLF to TRS and Congress’ alliance. He said: “As announced earlier, BLF is the most inclusive alliance with 55 OBC candidates contesting elections. The main agenda of BLF is social justice and power to the oppressed.” He added that the sudden candidature of Krishnaiah from Miryalaguda would only backfire to Congress which is expecting to lure OBC communities.

With nearly 53 per cent of Telangana’s populations belonging to OBC community, political commentators have been arguing that the role of these communities will be crucial in these upcoming elections. On the other hand, SC and ST representation from all the key parties in the race was limited to only those constituencies which are reserved by the election commission.

Women Representation Worse

Another major criticism of the TRS government has been that the party did not have even one woman minister in its cabinet in spite of six women TRS MLAs in the assembly. TRS party has further reduced inclusion of women by fielding only four women candidates out of total 119 in these elections.

Irony is that in 55 out of 119 constituencies, the number of female voters is higher than that of male voters.

Similar is the case with other parties, Congress, of the total 94 candidates, only 11 women are in contest. There are 11 women candidates each from BLF and BJP and one each from TDP, TJS and CPI.