Opposition backing Eatala Rajender is puzzling

While the tainted former Minister is trying to give a castiest angle to the developments, the opposition parties too seemed to be working on the same lines in an orchestrated manner

Hyderabad: A curious twist in the political developments in the State over the Eatala episode is the behaviour of the opposition parties. While one would have expected the Opposition to jump at the opportunity to demand the resignation of a Minister, who is embroiled in any controversy, these parties have rather enigmatically taken the stand to support the tainted former Minister.

While the tainted Minister is trying to give a castiest angle to the developments, the opposition parties too seemed to be working on the same lines in an orchestrated manner. Incidentally, Rajender indirectly is trying to send the message across targetting the Chief Minister and TRS president K Chandrashekhar Rao holding him responsible for his downfall.

In fact, the meteoric rise of Rajender in the political arena is only due to unstinted support extended by KCR. Rajender was not even in politics when the Telangana Rashtra Samithi was launched on April 27, 2001.

Soon the fledgling party contested the Zilla Parishad elections and bagged as many as 85 ZPTC posts in Telangana region, including all four ZPTC seats in erstwhile Kamalapur Assembly constituency laying strong foundation for making it as the party bastion. The TRS had even bagged the Zilla Parishad chairman’s post of erstwhile Karimnagar. Subsequently, about 3,000 candidates backed by the TRS were elected as sarpanches and another 12,000 candidates supported by the party won as ward members.

Unlike his claims of being a founding member, Eatala Rajender neither was a member of the TRS nor was he even elected as a ward member. He was into different businesses before venturing into poultry business in 1994 by taking poultry farms on lease in Hyderabad. In 2003, Rajender approached Chandrashekhar Rao and expressed his desire to join the fight for separate statehood. Rao inducted him into the party fold. Despite being a novice, he was given the TRS ticket to contest from Kamalapur constituency and subsequently made the TRS Legislative Party leader.

Even after the delimitation exercise, he was accommodated in Huzurabad constituency by KCR who shifted a senior leader like Captain K Laxmikantha Rao to Husnabad. Rajender continued to get prominent posts. When TRS came to power in 2014, he was given important portfolios like Finance and Civil Supplies. Later, again in 2018, he was given the Health and Family Welfare portfolio.

It was visible for the entire TRS cadre during the party meetings or otherwise that Rajender was considered as a close confidante of the party president. However, the party supremo also took personal interest in the former Minister and guided him whenever he went on a wrong path throughout his political career.

However, the party leaders feel that Rajender had become highly ambitious over the years considering the importance being given to him within the party and was aiming at higher political positions. It was openly visible for all to witness that Rajender chose to employ different tactics to mount pressure on the party president himself.

Repeatedly, he used the BC card i.e. of being a leader belonging to the Backward Classes and convened meetings with the community organisations in a bid to mount pressure on the Chief Minister. He was also known to have been confabulating with a select few journalists and other political leaders to mount or organise veiled attacks on the Chief Minister. He was also known to leak confidential information to put the government in an irksome position.

In this backdrop, when Rajender took up the bogey of the BC empowerment, he could have convinced Chandrashekhar Rao to introduce more schemes for BC welfare or at least strengthen the existing schemes rather than ridiculing the existing ones in the open like Kalyana Laxmi and other schemes for the needy backward families.

Rather than fighting for protecting and making efforts to distribute more land to the BC communities, he chose to occupy their lands, party leaders say. Interestingly, the political leader, who claims to be the champion of the Backward Classes, does not have a single BC person as his partner in any of his business ventures.

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