Of late the political scene of Andhra Pradesh is heating up. Three parties Telugu Desam Party, Congress and Praja Rajyam Party are putting their best efforts to get to power in the upcoming elections.

While it is common knowledge that parties allege each other in this preparatory season, I was totally surprised by few statements made by a leader from Congress party.

The youth wing leader of Praja Rajyam Party, apparently alleged Congress party men and specially a Wakf Board chairman as traitor. In response to this statement, the Wakf Board chairman, who is from a minority community said:

“You are calling all of our community as traitors, who do you think you are?”

This is a clear example of how political leaders make a simple allegation into an issue of religion. These comments were more than enough to spark controversy and perhaps some riots.

While civilized and socially aware may understand this very easily, people who blindly go by their leaders words may totally miss the mal intent and resort to baneful activities.

So called civilized always step away from their duty to vote with lame excuses such as “Nothing can change this country”. This is my call for all of us to show that what democracy can do! Please go and vote.

And you politicians, please please do not make your power mongering tactics into issues of religion and brew hatred between communities… Please…

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Andhra Pradesh is again at war over water, this time it is Maharastra for Babli Dam over Godavari. Remember the old Almatti issue, where Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh(AP) had dispute about the height of the Almatti Dam.

Height of Almatti Dam, which was built on Krishna, was being increased. AP alleged that Karnataka was raising the height of the dam illegally, which would dry up all of downstream reservoirs like Srisailam, Nagarjuna Sagar. The issue was highly publicized by the then opposition party Congress and Telugu Desam Party (TDP), which was the ruling party, received a lot of flak.

Congress alleged that TDP was not upfront is tackling the issue and has not effectively dealt with the issue. TDP in its defense said that it is because of its “All CM meeting” on the matter, which helped arrive at a conclusive decision and the height of the dam was restricted and was much lesser than actual proposed increase. Congress was very effective in making the issue a bad spot on TDP image, which was relatively better at that time. Chandrababu Naidu, who was the CM at that time also suffered defamation due to the issue.

That’s then.

History repeats itself, as people say.

This time around it is the Babli Dam and Congress is in power. The same thing what Congress did to TDP is being done to them. TDP is making sure it makes noise at every level about Congresses ineffectiveness. The party even went to the extent of entering the restricted areas of construction and taking pictures of the illegal construction happening there. Chandrababu Naidu and other leaders were also arrested in Delhi, while staging a protest.

Congress Party in AP is finding it self in a fix. Should they fail to tackle this, this would cause a big damage to their reputation. With elections only a few months away, Congress is really trying hard to get some results here.

YS Rajasekhara Reddy, CM of AP, must surely be having a feeling of Deja Vu.

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