How campaigns under watchful eyes of central leaders, year-long planning helped Congress secure Telangana

New Delhi: Absence of entrenched regional satraps like in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan appeared to have helped the Congress central leadership to design and execute a campaign modelled around ‘five-tier surveillance’ in Telangana, which they claim has helped them register a victory over ruling BRS.

For the Congress, it was a sweet revenge after BRS supremo K Chandrasekhar Rao is said to have reneged on his promise years ago to merge his party with the Grand Old Party after the UPA government acceded to the demand for a separate Telangana state carved out of Andhra Pradesh.

While Ashok Gehlot and Kamal Nath left no room for others in designing the campaign and the central leadership taking a back seat in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, Telangana saw a different strategy where the central leaders were closely involved in the planning from a year ago unlike in other poll-bound states.

The central leadership’s increased role in Telangana was seen from the number of campaign programmes Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanaka Gandhi Vadra. All three attended more campaigns in Telangana than the other three states.

Rahul attended at least 24 programmes spread over 10 days in Telangana while he did 11 each for Rajasthan (in 4 days) and Madhya Pradesh (5 days). Priyanka attended 14 programmes in seven days as against 12 in Madhya Pradesh (7 days), five in Chhattisgarh (3 days) and seven in Rajasthan (4 days). Kharge attended 11 in Telangana (6 days), eight in Rajasthan (5 days) and six each in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh (three each days).

Congress General Secretary (Organisation) KC Venugopal camped in Telangana to coordinate the efforts as Reddy and Bhatti Vikramarka were contesting. Daily review meetings with candidates and observers were held.

Congress leaders sought to put Bharat Jodo Yatra and subsequent Karnataka Assembly victory as the game-changing moments for Telangana. Sources said, senior leaders like Mallikarjun Kharge, Rahul Gandhi, KC Venugopal, state president A Revanth Reddy and Opposition Leader M Bhatti Vikramarka first held a meeting to chalk out strategy a year ago.

This was followed by state-wide ‘padayatras’ under the leadership of Reddy and Vikramarka and appointment of state observers who conducted surveys to study people’s sentiments on the BRS government. A separate survey was conducted to identify influential leaders who could be candidates.

Sources said the monitoring of the party’s activities by the central leadership at five levels helped the Congress come to power. While state observers looked at the big picture, Special Observers at Parliamentary constituencies, observers at every Assembly seat and observers for Assembly clusters kept a tight vigil at the micro level. Special Observers were also appointed to look into issues of minorities and marginalised in seats where they have substantial numbers.

The leadership also analysed the winnability quotient in every seat, an exercise, leaders said, led to the identification of winning candidates.

Venugopal also met around 15 rebel leaders, who were persuaded to support Congress candidates by promising them that their interests will be taken care of though they were not chosen as candidates.