Where is Telangana’s former CM K Chandrashekar Rao these days? It’s the most buzzing question in Hyderabad these days.
It’s going to be a year. He hasn’t made a public appearance since the April-May 2024 bus yatra.
The BRS won 39 seats in the 2023 polls, and the Congress won 64. Since then, 10 BRS MLAs have defected to the ruling party, and there is still no word from KCR.
Except for turning up once in the Assembly to take oath as an MLA (Gajwel) in February and then the bus yatra in April, KCR hasn’t been seen much in public. Either something is brewing, or he thinks it is beneath his stature to address or face his political opponents in the state who he more or less never saw as equals.
Also read: Tea breaks, chats, selfies & X debut — how KCR is trying to reconnect with public after 2023 drubbing
KCR has always tried to maintain a mysterious aura about himself, especially over the last decade. Moreover, how would KCR, the CM for almost a decade, function in his role as a leader of Opposition? After all, he carved out an almost mythical image for himself, only addressing issues as per his will and often neglecting the Opposition.
He created a perception that Telangana is also all about him and that is also one reason why many who had fought for statehood alongside him had their knives out for him in the last elections. Let’s not forget that he also changed the original name of his party from Telangana Rashtra Samithi to BRS a few years ago, hoping to go national. All that has fallen flat for now.
Do KCR’s failed ventures, especially after his successes in the past, have something to do with him hiding in a shell?
KCR is one of the few leaders in the country who managed to embed his DNA in Telangana since he led the separate statehood movement from 2009 to 2014. And for a man who was at one point the most important political leader in the state, his disappearance, or slumber perhaps, has been rather surprising.
It would have been a cracker of a political scenario to see KCR in an entirely new avatar, one where he is not on a pedestal. I expected him to become a little more down-to-earth, given that his interactions with the media over the last decade have become more and more one-sided.
Questions, especially tough ones, were often met with sarcastic answers. KCR would end up chiding media persons. It’s not unusual in politics but I should have guessed that in typical KCR style, him staying out of the picture is also one way to preserve his political image.
In a way, this idea of keeping us guessing about his next move is working. His son, BRS working president KT Rama Rao, and nephew (ex-irrigation minister) Harish Rao are currently leading the charge as the Opposition’s face.
I remember KCR being very accessible and a public person in terms of interactions soon after the BRS came to power in 2014. There were interviews, events, etc, and he was all over the place. But within a few years, as he began announcing more and more welfare schemes, an entirely new person emerged.
The BRS became a top-down system, wherein MLAs seldom mattered. That has not changed, as his family is still at the core of the party.
But such a disappearance from public view was entirely unexpected. For a man who once was at the centre of everything in Telangana, this is very strange. Political analysts and party members say this is part of his strategy—to wait and watch how the ruling Congress works.
This may even allow those who he shrugged aside from becoming prominent, like Prof M Kodandaram, who once led the Telangana statehood movement with KCR. Today, Kodandaram is an MLC, thanks to the Congress. It is a matter of time before the ruling party tries to erase KCR’s name to rewrite their own version of how the state was formed.
Yunus Lasania is a Hyderabad-based journalist whose work primarily focuses on politics, history and culture. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)
