About Telangana Rashtra Samithi
The Telangana Rashtra Samithi, famously known as the TRS, is a regional political party, as approved by the Election Commission of India. It has its mass base primarily in the state of Andhra Pradesh, a southern state of India. The political position of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi is Centre-Right and it operates on the political ideologies of Regionalism and Conservatism.
The TRS was formed in the year 2001 by K. Chandrasekhar Rao, who was initially a member of the Chandrababu Naidu-led Telugu Desam Party. However, Rao soon quit the TDP owing to political differences with the party supremo. He independently contested in local body elections and won impressively, due to his ideological and political resolutions. Soon the Telangana Rashtra Samithi was formed and it won the local institutional bodies such as the Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituencies and the Mandal Parishad Territorial Constituencies.
The chief claim to fame of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi is in its uncompromising spirit to make the dream and aspirations for Telangana a reality. The party had been emboldening its appeal to the people of united Andhra Pradesh on the grounds that it will redress the oppression and burden of the minority communities in the Telangana regions of AP.
The TRS was a prominent member of the Congress-led coalition, the United Progressive Alliance, from 2004 to 2006. In 2004, the party won 5 Lok Sabha seats and 26 seats in the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly. Within a brief span of the alliance with the Congress, the TRS quit the coalition over the inordinate delay that the Congress made in announcing the constitutional validity of the formation of Telangana. In its history of electoral performances, only once did the TRS fare poorly in the polls. In the 2008 by-elections, the party performed dismally, being able to retain only 7 out of the 16 assembly constituencies and 2 out of the four Lok Sabha seats. Such poor performance made Chandrasekhar Rao want to quit his position as President. But because party members and the people had immense faith on him, he held the post.
In the dramatic performance in 2009 elections, when the TRS initially entered into the Telugu Desam Party-led Grand Alliance, along with other Third Front members, it performed even more poorly, as compared with 2008. Even before the vote-counting began, the TRS shifted alliance to the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. The party got only a meagre 4% votes in the elections. The TRS rode back to power only in 2012 by-elections, when renewed struggles ensued over the demands for the creation of the new state of Telangana. Finally, however, the Congress heeded to the demands of the TRS in forming a separate Telangana. In September 2013 the constitutional validity process was underway.