KCR Calls on Governor Along with Party MLAs and MPs

TRS MLA-elect Eetela Rajender, along with his colleagues, speaking to reporters after meeting governor ESL Narasimhan at the Raj Bhavan in Hyderabad on Sunday. 

HYDERABAD: It was 11.30 am. on Sunday. A cavalcade of swanky bullet-proof cars screeched to a halt in front of the Raj Bhavan here.

TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao stepped out of one of the vehicles, surrounded by security personnel, and walked in with his party’s newly elected MLAs and MPs in tow.

The TRS chief Rao had earlier met Governor ESL Narasimhan several times to plead with him to prevail upon the then State government to address the issues of Telangana people. But, the pink party boss’s presence at the Raj Bhavan on Sunday was a momentous occasion for him and his party. The reason: This time, he met the Governor in the capacity of the ‘chief minister-designate’ of Telangana, which will become the 29th State in the country on June 2.

Rao called on the Governor not only to take his blessings but also to inform him about the unanimous resolution passed by the TRS Legislature Party (TRSLP) electing him as its leader.

Even as Rao was introducing the newly elected MLAs and MPs of his party to Narasimhan, party seniors Etela Rajender and Pocharam Srinivas Reddy submitted the a copy of the TRSLP resolution to the Governor.

The 30-minute-long meeting witnessed some cheerful and humorous moments when Narasimhan is understood to have cracked jokes in reply to the pink party chief’s posers.

According to sources, when the TRS boss Rao asked for the Governor’s cooperation in constructing a few more power plants in the new state to bail it out from ‘electricity crisis’, Nara-simhan is learnt to have replied in a jovial manner, saying, “Henceforth, power will be in your hands. Then, where is the question of having power problems?” The Darbar Hall of Raj Bhavan reverberated with peals of laughter.

Pointing out that party leader and KCR’s nephew Harish Rao was absent on the occasion, the Governor is understood to have recalled in a lighter vein that some of the TRS MLAs, including Harish, had shouted at him, saying, “Governor should go back”, during the budget speech delivered by him in the AP Assembly.

Responding to this, party secretary general K Kesava Rao told Narasimhan that the then MLAs of the party had shouted at him only in a fit of rage as they had raised their voice against the injustice being meted out to Telangana.

Stating that he had never taken such issues seriously, Narasimhan promised his full cooperation to the new government.

“I will cooperate with you like a big brother. Probably, barring Kesava Rao ji, I could be older than all of you,” the Governor was quoted as saying amid peals of laughter.

Emerging from the meeting, Rajender told reporters, who were waiting outside Raj Bhavan, that their meeting with the Governor was just a formality.

“We have informed the Governor that we had elected our party chief Rao as the leader of the TRSLP,” he said.

When asked about the possibility of Rao taking the oath as the CM before June 2, the appointed day for the new state, Rajender replied, “We have not asked the Governor to prepone the appointed day. I hope, the swearing-in of Rao as CM of the T-state will be held only after June 2.”

He said only KCR has the capability of transforming the Telangana state into a Golden State. That was why people of Telangana had reposed faith on his leadership in the just-concluded Assembly polls, he added.