T movement at rest in Station Ghanpur

STATION GHANPUR: As one might guess, this is a railway station town, one at which busy trains stop for the regulation two minutes.

But it's the bus stand that's the centre, where one might get a reading of the the pulse of the townsfolk.

All around at the terminal, on moss-blackened walls and strung from electricity poles, are faded remnants of posters and flexis of past agitations.

Only a tinge of colour remains on them to indicate that they were once pink. A few yards from the bus stand, CPM candidate Ilishan Dyda was holding a public meeting. A few hundreds heard him out impassively.

A few yards further, MRPS workers in afternoon torpor, waiting for the next batch to take over their relay hunger fast for SC reclassification.

A few months earlier, a CPM meeting might not have been possible.

For Telangana activists would disrupt any meeting by parties opposed to their dream of a separate state, as CPM is. Today, the meeting goes through unobstructed.

Station Ghanpur is in Warangal district, and ought to be a hotbed of Telangana separatism. But the freedom allowed today to naysayers like the CPM candidate should not be surprising.

The people of this constituency remain votaries of a separate state for Telangana but right now the passions are in lull mode for now is not the occasion to show them.

There is much criticism of the TRS for leading the movement into the lull.

'If you catch something, you should hold it in an udumu pattu. You shouldn't be like a snake which releases its hold easily,' says Rajaiah, a farmer from Raghunathapalli.

The simile refers to the grasp of a monitor lizard which is locally reputed to be so tenacious that the Kakatiya soldiery used them to scale up fort battlements.

Rajaiah is unhappy that the TRS let go of the vice-like grip which it had on the state government right up to the Sakala Janula Samme back in August.

In the 2009 election, the local TDP strong man, K Srihari, lost his fief although his party was in alliance with the TRS.

In the subsequent years, the TDP has become no dearer to the Telangana separatists, for having taken a 'two-eyed' stance -- locally derided as cock-eyed -- on the separate state question.

But he's back in the fray in this byelection, hoping to pass under the Telangana radar.

Given the lull in the Telangana movement, there are signs in this town that the voters are back to their default mode, wanting water, cheaper fertilisers and welfare goodies.

'We have several problems like drinking water, farmers' issues and others. Besides, the Telangana movement is not strong right now. I'll definitely vote for Srihari,'' said Rajaiah said.

The Madigas of this SC reserved constituency are for Srihari, and the MRPS has indicated support for him.

That's good for Srihari, but he has to contend with the Telangana sentiment, which, even if latent, runs deep.

A CPM activist campaiging for his party candidate said it didn't really matter who won but 'Telangana should win'.

Incumbent K Rajaiah is in this by-election in TRS colours, having shed the Congress kanduva to make a point about his fidelity to the Telangana movement.

And he has to contend with voters who might want to attend to immediate problems.