Tummala the man behind TRS phenomenal success

While the Telangana Rashtra Samiti's landslide victory is being attributed to the work of young IT Minister K. Taraka Ramarao, political pundits say he is only the front of the success. The real success was, however, written by Roads and Buildings Minister Tummala Nageshwara Rao. Tummala had a strategy to capture the settlers' votes in Hyderabad. The toning down of the TRS rhetoric against the settlers is a case in point. Second, KTR and other TRS leaders' repeated statements befriending the settlers have assuaged the feelings of the settlers. Besides, Tummala, who had along been in the TDP since its formation and whose grip on Hyderabad as a film-maker and otherwise, clinched the settlers' votes. Chief Minsiter K. Chandrasekhar Rao gave enough prominence to Tummala, who had lost the 2014 assembly election, by drafting him for the TRS thinktank. If KCR's strategy was to derive the best of the available TDP talent and transform it as that of the TRS, it had worked to the fullest. In the poll strategy, not many could match that of the TDP's during NTR's time. They could predict the outcome of any poll in the State with pinpoint accuracy and could give scientific reasons for failures, if any. Thus if Tummala, who belongs to the key Khammam district, had promised 100 seats for the TRS in the GHMC poll, it worked with 99% success.