Andhra polls: Backward majority in 70% seats hold key to power in Telangana

Hyderabad: The main political parties in the Telangana region, the Congress and the Telugu Desam, are both trying to win the backward class vote.
TDP chief N. Chandrababu Naidu had announced that his party would make a backward class leader the first Chief Minister of Telangana State. The Congress has appointed backward class leader Ponnala Laxmaiah as the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee president, and has promised to make a scheduled class candidate the Chief Minister.

TRS chief K. Chandrasekhar Rao had also promised, in the early days of the Telangana struggle, that the TRS would make a scheduled caste leader the Chief Minister. He went back on his word after the Telangana Bill was passed in Parliament. Now, TRS leaders say the people of Telangana want only Mr Rao to be the Chief Minister as he has a vision of how Telangana should developed.

The Congress and TDP hope that after Mr Rao changed his mind about appointing an SC as Chief Minister, the TRS will lose the SC vote.

The backward class vote has been with the Telugu Desam party since the party was formed. But the Telangana issue drove many groups away from the TDP. In the Telangana region, BC voters will play a key role in which party comes to power in the elections.

The Telangana region has 119 Assembly constituencies, of which 63 constituencies have a BC population between 50 per cent and 78 per cent. There are 39 constituencies with a backward class population between 50 and 59.9 per cent. In 78 assembly constituencies, the BCs and Muslin population together is between 50 and 80 per cent.

The Srikrishna Committee that was constituted to assess the feasibility of the new state had calculated that BCs and OBCs in the Telangana region constitute 50.07 per cent of the population, SCs are 15.8 per cent, STs are 8.9 per cent and Muslims are 12.4 per cent. Together, these groups constitute 89.3 per cent of the population of the Telangana region.

The committee said that the percentage of all forward castes put together is only 12.87 per cent. In 104 of the 119 Assembly constituencies in Telangana, the BCs, SCs, STs and minorities clubbed together constitute 87.4 per cent of the population.

Both the TD and Congress feel that the mood at the grassroots level is anti-forward and ruling class. Both parties believe that if they can win the votes of the weaker sections, particularly BCs, they will come to power in Telangana state.