Caste Aside By KCR

When some farmers in Telangana CM K. Chandra­shekhar Rao’s native Medak district accused the family of his cabinet colleague, health minister Etala Rajender, of grabbing their land, KCR, who was in self-quarantine after testing positive for Covid, sacked Etala within 24 hours of receiving the complaint. KCR’s move came after the district collector, citing his preliminary reports after being asked to probe the matter, confirmed that there was some substance to the allegation. KCR also directed the collector to ask the forest department to take action against a company owned by Rajender’s wife for felling trees. The sacked minister and his family members have moved the high court against the government’s action.

Rajender, considered a founding pillar of the TRS, is from Karimnagar district and belongs to the influential backward caste Mudiraj community, which has considerable presence in a majority of the state’s 117 assembly constituencies. Though KCR used to acknowledge Rajender’s role in the statehood movement, they fell apart after the party’s ­emphatic win in the 2018 assembly polls. Besides re-inducting his son K.T. Ramarao and nephew T. Harish Rao in his cabinet, KCR also brought another nephew, Santosh Kumar, into the party fold and made him a Rajya Sabha member. He also paved the way for his daughter Kalvakuntla Kavitha, who lost the 2019 Lok Sabha polls from Nizamabad, to become an MLC. These actions apparently put Rajender and other backward caste leaders to some discomfort.

After the formation of Telangana, KCR had made Rajender his finance minister to send out a message that he values the support of the backward castes. Rajender’s sacking and the subsequent silence in the party indicate that KCR is not willing to tolerate dissent from his colleagues. The Congress and the BJP have accused KCR of not acting in a similar manner against leaders from his community. “KCR is behaving like a feudal lord,” says former Rajya Sabha member V. Hanumantha Rao of the Congress. “His Velama community is known for ill-treating weaker sections, which ­resulted in the rise of left-wing extremists to rein them in.” This sentiment is echoed by the state BJP unit, demoralised since its candidate lost deposit in the Nagarjunasagar assembly bypoll. “There are others in the cabinet against whom similar land-grab accusations were made, but no action was initiated,” says the BJP’s Telangana president Bandi Sanjay Kumar. “Why did the CM act only against Etala Rajender? Was it not due to the fear that he had become a thorn in KCR’s flesh by daring to question his omissions and commissions?”

Rajender, whose wife belongs to the dominant Reddy community, has not ruled out joining the BJP or floating a new regional party. His aides, however, claim he is in no hurry, as the prevailing Covid situation would not allow him to reach out to the masses.

By M.S. Shanker in Hyderabad