No compensation from TRS government: Why a hundred private lecturers in Telangana's Karimnagar are contesting elections

The Huzurabad constituency in Telangana's Karimnagar, which is set to go for by-election, is fast turning into a political battlefield, and private college lecturers are now at the forefront of this peculiar political war.

Threatening the TRS with defeat in the by-elections, the president of the Telangana Lecturers Forum, the BJP's Murali Manohar Rao said that the lecturers demand compensation for the loss they have suffered, failing which, they will file their applications to contest the Huzurabad seat.

The TLF, has said that college lecturers have been neglected by the government during the pandemic. And thus, as a form of protest, one hundred of them have declared they will contest the elections in Huzurabad. Edexlive reached out to the lecturers at TLF to determine what their demands and grievances are, and to gauge their strategy in this situation. There has been no response from the lecturers yet. 

But there's more to the political circus. Former Health Minister of Telangana, Etala Ranjender, who also happened to be the MLC from the Huzurabad constituency, was ousted from the cabinet following the land grabbing scandal in the state in May, in which he was also one of the accused. The shunned minister then resigned from his post in the Assembly, and also ditched the TRS for the BJP in June. 

The teachers' decision to contest the elections poses a serious political threat to the TRS party, which stands to lose the constituency. But one does wonder what is in it for the teachers? Murli Manohar, on his part, told The New Indian Express that the lecturers are protesting because neither the state government nor the managements of their institutions came forward to their aid when lockdowns left them at sea. The plight of teachers of private institutions during the pandemic has been gaining traction of late. Many of them have said that they are unable to make ends meet, and quite a number have been reportedly laid-off.

The Telangana government had announced aid of 25kg rice and Rs 2000 per month for private school teachers until schools reopen. However, the TLF allegedly claims that they haven't taken any measures to provide relief to college lecturers.