HYDERABAD: Intent on sweeping the municipal elections, TRS working president KT Rama Rao on Sunday constituted a nine-member coordination committee to shoulder the responsibility of ensuring a landslide victory for the TRS in all the urban local bodies (ULB).
The committee has Palla Rajeswar Reddy, Seri Subhash Reddy, Gadari Balamallu, Mareddy Srinivasa Reddy, Bonthu Ramamohan, Gattu Ramachandar Rao, Dande Vittla, MLCs Srinivas Reddy and Naveen Rao as members.
Rama Rao, who is also a minister in Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s Cabinet, asked the committee members to provide necessary support to the local leadership in ensuring that nothing went awry.
He asked them to work from the Telangana Bhavan and take the Opposition head-on by matching their allegations with befitting replies. He also asked them to explain to the public what the TRS government has been doing to infuse a new strength into the civic bodies.
The pink party, which has readied its front-line offence in the districts, has now constituted the committee to help them on the field. They would provide necessary information to the leaders at the ground-level on the government’s policies, timely advice on how to go about with the electioneering (keeping in view the nitty-gritty of the exercise), and reach out to the various segments of society to reap a rich harvest of votes at the time of the hustings.
Rama Rao, who had convened a meeting with Ministers, MPs, MLAs, and MLCs at the Telangana Bhavan on Saturday, concentrated on ground-level factors on Sunday to ensure that all the votes go to the party’s official candidates. He has already asked the leaders to use kid gloves in persuading the rebels to withdraw from the fray, but with a veiled threat: if they do not play along, they would be out of TRS forever.
The TRS working president is also keen on using social media to reach out to the youth and the middle-aged to turn the tide in favour of the pink party. He wanted the party activists to be active on social media platforms and provide necessary grist to the users to win them over to the TRS.
Earlier, the IT minister had given a pep talk to the Ministers, asking them to tell the voters that the TRS government was committed to making the civic bodies vibrant. "Take the message that the TRS government had sanctioned out of turn funds to Warangal, Khammam and Nizamabad civic bodies for taking up development works," he told them.
Apart from this, the TRS working president wanted the party functionaries to take special care to expose the nexus between the BJP and the Congress. The two parties would try to go to any extent to mar the TRS prospects and therefore all the party leaders should be vigilant and expose them before the electors, he said.
He also had a special session with the ministers and MLAs, in whose constituencies, municipal corporations are going to the polls. "We should win all the 10 corporations. There cannot be any room for laxity," he said.
He asked Ramagundam MLA K Chander to take the help of Minister Koppula Eshwar in ensuring the victory of TRS candidates in the Ramagundam Municipal Corporation. He told Chander that since Koppula had good rapport with the leaders in Ramagundam, his help would come in handy.
As for the civic bodies of Malkajgiri, Rama Rao told Minister Ch Malla Reddy to explain to the public the benefits that the people of the newly-created civic bodies would get after their upgradation.
Two TRS candidates elected unopposed
RAJANNA-SIRCILLA/JAGTIAL: TRS candidates in the Sircilla and Korutla municipalities were unanimously elected in the Urban Local Body (ULB) polls as ward members. In Sircilla municipality, Darla Keerthana from Ward 34 was elected unanimously after two of her opponents withdrew from the fray.
Unlike in other municipalities, the TRS party’s B-forms were given to the candidates by MAUD Minister KT Rama Rao the Sircilla candidate well in advance. In Korutla municipality, meanwhile, Ward 23 candidate Uppala Uma Devi was unanimously elected after her opponents withdrew their nominations