Selling applications for Telangana Congress tickets akin to raising donations to build Andhra Capital

HYDERABAD: Charity, they say, should begin at home. For the Telangana Congress unit, which has been loud on publicity ever since TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu’s blue-eyed boy Revanth Reddy took over the reins of the Congress unit of the State, it’s beginning with selling applications for party tickets.

After all, currency in politics has two connotations — being current is one, and the other is ‘famously infamous’ wads of notes. Remember Revanth Reddy carrying currency to Anglo-Indian MLA Elvis Stevenson 2015? There have been and will be umpteen occasions when officials of the Election Commission and also the police seize huge amounts of currency from different political parties.

Well, lets take a look at the way the Telangana Congress is planning to gain ‘currency’ in public. Revanth Reddy on Friday announced that applications for the Congress tickets for the upcoming Assembly elections are for sale. The forms were priced at Rs. 50,000 for all and Rs. 25,000 for SC, ST applicants. One must understand that the fee is meant just for sourcing the application form.

Considering the Congress unit’s brave front in Telangana, this move to sell applications for the party ticket is ostensibly to artificially jack up competition among aspiring contestants. The intent is to send across a message among people that there is a ‘mad rush’ within the party for the party tickets.

But, is it to keep the wolf away from the door or to let only the wolves in by opening the doors wide open?

If the party is suffering from paucity of funds, where did it mobilise funds from for the pompous rallies it has conducted ever since Revanth Reddy became TPCC president? As it is, there is an unspoken doubt that has been lurking in the minds of his critics that Revanth Reddy is a “Planter’s Punch” (not the cocktail) packed by his ‘mentor’ on the Congress while ‘exporting’ him into the Congress. And, the ‘funding’ is rumoured to be the ‘export duty’ being paid by the mentor to strengthen his protégé.

The Congress may cover up putting a price tag for application to enter electoral fray under the guise of generating a sense of seriousness among contestants.

If 10 people on an average want to try their luck from each constituency in Telangana, the party could mobilise a ballpark amount of Rs. 6 crore. Big deal? Definitely not.

Then, isn’t the very idea sounding asinine? Who is the source of inspiration for this funny thought?

Let us examine the “strength” of the moorings of Revanth Reddy which are anchored in the Telugu Desam Party. He doesn’t go for innovation, but prefers to replicate the playbook of his erstwhile alma mater.

When Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated in 2014, his guru Chandrababu Naidu had given a clarion call to people to “donate generously” for the construction of the new capital city. It was so ludicrous that the State Government had set up a ‘Hundi’ (donation box) in the Andhra Pradesh side of the Secretariat in Hyderabad. And, worse still, Naidu and TDP leaders raised “unaccounted for” donations from people. Even Naidu’s wife, Bhuvaneswari, acquiesced to this call and donated her platinum bangles. That’s what had happened to all that is not relevant here.

The very decision to raise donations from general public which would surely be so miniscule as compared the humongous requirement to implement the grandiose plans to build an opulent capital city for the survivor State is ridiculous. It drew worst criticism that Naidu himself had to lick his proverbial wound and eject himself out of the embarrassing activity.

Well, doesn’t Revanth Reddy’s plan to put a price tag for the application forms for contestants in the upcoming elections sound similar? How much money the Congress is proposing to expend in Telangana? How much money it shelled out in the recent Karnataka elections is not beyond anybody’s imagination. This is what juxtaposes the TPCC president with his former boss.

Revanth Reddy has successfully imported the TDP playbook into the Congress. Telangana Congress is palpably facing not paucity of funds, but surely bankruptcy of ideas. Brashly put, it’s suffering from constipation of thoughts and diarrhoea of deeds.