2BHK Scheme & Land Woes: How Is KCR Placed in His Second Seat Kamareddy?

How safe is Kamareddy for KCR? Will the segment give him the assurance that he is seeking?

As you enter Kamareddy district, rows of abandoned two-bedroom houses welcome you.

Window panes broken and sewerage pipes left unconnected, the bystanders say that these empty houses are abandoned because they are "unlivable."

More than 200 flats costing Rs 25 lakh each were ostensibly handed over by Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao months ago in August after he had announced this historically and culturally rich town of Kamareddy to be his second seat from where he would contest the Assembly elections. At the time of his announcement, many wondered why the chief minister was looking past Gajwel – his pocket borough since 2014.  

Former MLC and Professor of Political Science at Osmania University K Nageshwar says, "Clearly, Kamareddy is meant to be a safe seat. He does see the opposition putting up a good fight in Gajwel."

But how safe is Kamareddy for KCR? Will Kamareddy give him the assurance that he is seeking?

Rebels Face KCR in Kamareddy

By the end of 15 November, the last day for filing nominations, about 38 candidates could not be staved off from contesting in Kamareddy against the chief minister. This is after the ruling party convinced and pacified nearly 19 candidates that their concerns would be looked into.

But those that are ploughing ahead are mostly rebels who broke away from the ranks of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) and Independents who wished to challenge KCR and the other two senior candidates – Venkata Ramana Reddy from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Revanth Reddy from the Congress.

At the heart of all this rebellion is disappointment – of not having received everything they were promised by the government and the unresponsive government representatives at the taluk and mandal levels.

Ibrahim Mustafa, who runs a small dhaba in Bikanur, a village bordering the Kamareddy town limits, says, "My ammi did not receive her two-bedroom house despite filing an application. We were asked to vacate our rented place and after we moved out, our house was allotted to someone else."

Mustafa, who is visually impaired in one eye, was also upset about not receiving compensation due from the health insurance scheme to have his eye operated on in Hyderabad's reputed LV Prasad Eye Hospital. The state government had announced in 2021 that persons with disabilities would receive Rs 5 lakh as health insurance under the Aarogyasri scheme.

In Kamareddy constituency alone, more than 2,500 families belonging to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and Other Backward Classes were promised housing facilities but only a few hundred of them received keys to their homes.  

'Will My Land Be Taken Away?'

However, this is not the only set of concerns that the people of Kamareddy have. Villagers in Lingapur, a small hamlet in the constituency, are ridden with fear.

Swaroopa, who owns a two-acre cotton farm, is convinced about voting for the 'hand' symbol (the Congress). "My land will be taken by the government. Do you see these roads that flank my farm? They were laid for the master plan. If KCR comes back, I am sure I will lose my farmland ," she says even as she hesitates to disclose her identity fearing retribution from the government authorities.   

The Quint also spoke to Balamani and Ragula Bhudevi. They are farm labourers but they grow paddy crops themselves in the adjacent plots. "We want to retain our land. What is the point of the Rythu Bandhu scheme if we cannot have our lands?"

To relieve farmers from debt burden, the Rythu Bandhu scheme was introduced by the Telangana government in 2018. It provides investment support of Rs 5,000 per acre per farmer each season.

The master plan in question first came to light in 2022 when the municipal administration announced that it would expand the district headquarters to make Kamareddy a "model town." About 6,000-plus hectares would be acquired for this purpose and many villages would be merged into the Kamareddy town.

The state government had then given the villagers two months' time to object to such a plan being implemented. The villagers from Lingapur, Chinnamallareddy, Tekriyal, Adloor, Machareddy, Domakunda, Bikanur, Bibipet were up in arms and had staged major protests fearing an encore of the Mallana Sagar reservoir project, where nearly 14 villages were submerged and where farmers had to contend with poor compensation.  

Upon seeing such large-scale protests, the government recalled its plan to go ahead with the master plan and the industrial zone after the Telangana High Court intervened in February this year.

"It was Venkataramana Reddy [BJP candidate] who fought for us. He set aside his BJP scarf, traveled by foot to each village, and spoke to us about how we should fight to save our lands. Otherwise, we would have all lost our livelihoods," Manchala Harish Yadav, who has a two-acre cotton farm, said.

"Polls are about images. Polls are perceptions. What this tells us is that KCR is not doing great on both fronts," said Professor PL Vishweshwar Rao, and Academician and Vice-President of the Telangana Jana Samithi, a party of intellectuals and pro-Telangana activists founded by former Osmania University Professor M Kodandaram.

Rao was closely associated with the statehood movement and says that such strong sentiments could trigger a political blowback for KCR. He believes that the case of rebels and independents standing up to the chief minister is not to be viewed as a show of their invincibility but of their unwillingness to cop out of this already tough fight between the chief minister and two other powerful faces from the opposition.  

Changing Power Dynamics

As a developed constituency with close to 1,70,000 voters, Kamareddy is dominated by Komatis or Banyas, a favourite of the BJP. "They are silent BJP voters. They do not need convincing or a flamboyant display of strength," says Venkata Ramana Reddy, the BJP candidate who was earlier a Zilla Parishad chairman until 2018.  

While the concerns faced by the Kamareddy electorate validate a lot of assumptions, predictive power is shaky. The growing support and satisfying shift to the BJP say six months ago, has now shifted to the Congress.

A 72-year-old kirana shop owner in Adloor Yellareddy village says, "The Sriram Sagar dam and reservoir that was built during Jawaharlal Nehru's time is still intact. Not a drop is leaking from it, unlike the Kaleshwaram project. The R&R was also complete and my family still tills land in the same district," he says. 

Analysts say the other deciding factor in addition to the votes split by the Independents in Kamareddy would be the minority population. Having been beneficiaries of the Shaadi Mubarak scheme and the sewing machines, more than 2,000 households have stood to benefit from special schemes for the minorities.

"Though we stand fifth in the country with respect to minorities, our budget is the highest in the country for minority development," KT Rama Rao, working president of the BRS, and Minister for IT and Industries, told The Quint previously.   

Prof PL Vishweshwar says, "Whoever wins, will win with a very slim margin of 1,000-1,500 votes." This sums up the nature of the contest, the level of discontentment, and why even the safe seat would throw up many surprises in what seems to be a tri-fold contest in Kamareddy.