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In a reflection of the serious trouble brewing in the ranks of Telangana Rashtra Samiti, the party's beleaguered president K Chandrasekhara Rao faced the wrath of the party cadre during a visit to Nalgonda district.
Angry party workers calling KCR the "traitor of Telangana movement" staged a gherao during his visit to Jameelpur village and police had to intervene to disperse the crowd. KCR had gone to the village to console the family of a senior party leader who recently passed away.
Led by a mandal level president Adi Narayana, the party workers shouted slogans holding KCR responsible for undermining the Telangana movement. "The time has come for us to beat the traitors with stones," Narayana said.
The anger over the alleged sale of party tickets came to the fore as workers told KCR face that he had not right to continue as the party president. "You have failed completely. You sold yourself to Chandrababu Naidu and you also sold party tickets," the workers said.
Though KCR has been targeting opponents as 'Telangana traitors' in the past, this is the first time that his party workers have put the label on him.
The TRS was trounced in the recent election and its strength in the state assembly was reduced to ten and it could bag only two Lok Sabha seats.
Apart from KCR, party's secretary general and film actress Vijayshanti is also facing similar angry reactions from party supporters. In a reflection of disenchantment with the leadership, 'missing' cases were lodged with the police both against KCR and Vijayshanti in their respective Lok Sabha constituencies of Mahbubnagar and Medak.
The complainant said that ever since the elections, both of them were not seen in the constituency.
The revolt took a serious turns when MLC and KCR confidante Dilip Kumar came out against the leadership and announced launching of a non-political platform Telangana Vimochana Samiti to steer the Telangana movement. The TVS will be formally launched on June 18 and it will involve activists from different organisations and sections of the society.
Adding fuel to the fire, Mahbubnagar district president Yennam Srinivas also revolted and demanded KCR resignation as TRS president owing the moral responsibility for the electoral debacle.
The situation has become so serious that the TRS had to seek police protection for its sprawling headquarters 'Telangana Bhavan' in the posh Banjara Hills area of Hyderabad.
Vijayshanti tried to defend her absence since the elections saying she had gone to Delhi to attend Parliament and was busy in finishing 'documentation' work. But she could not explain why she and KCR were absent from the Parliament on the first day when the other members were taking oath.
In a belated response to the attacks from dissidents, KCR has now started district wise review of party's electoral performance.