The recent meeting held by Y S Vijayamma, widow of former chief minister of combined Andhra Pradesh state Dr Y S Rajasekhar Reddy, in Hyderabad on September 2 to commemorate his 12th death anniversary, has turned out to be a disappointment for her daughter Y S Sharmila.
Though the meeting was claimed to be only for paying tributes to late YSR, the speeches of Vijayamma and Sharmila indicated that it was essentially meant for gauging the support for Sharmila who launched a new political party in Telangana.
Among the invitees present at the meeting, apart from Sharmila’s followers, majority of the leaders who were associated with YSR were only from Andhra Pradesh. Except K M Khan and Komatireddy Venkat Reddy, there were no big leaders from Telangana.
A post-meeting analysis indicated that invoking YSR legacy in Telangana will not work out for Sharmila to gain a foothold in Telangana in any manner.
There is no doubt that there are a large number of beneficiaries of YSR welfare schemes in Telangana and they all have gratitude towards him.
But the Telangana movement, which erupted after YSR’s death, had more or less erased the memories of YSR among the people.
In the last seven years of the state formation, the Telangana sentiment and local issues have gained prominence than YSR image.
On the other hand, the entire YSR legacy was successfully grabbed by his son Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy much before the bifurcation of the combined state and almost all the YSR fans had already gone into Jagan’s camp and those fans in Telangana moved into the TRS. So, there is nothing left for Sharmila.
This has become pretty evident with the meeting convened by Vijayamma. Now, Sharmila has to establish her own brand of politics, rather than banking on YSR’s image.
Even if there is any YSR wave in Telangana, it is very little and it won’t help her gain any major political mileage.
Having realised that, Sharmila is now planning to try her luck by directly going into the people and taking up their issues.
She has already been championing the cause of the unemployed and she is getting pretty good response.
She will now be embarking on a padayatra from October 18 and that is going to decide the fate of her party in Telangana.
Since she had already done the padayatra in 2013, she hopes to make an impact on the electorate to a considerable impact.