Hyderabad: Weeks after its defeat in the Telangana assembly polls, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) has lost its grip over the Singareni coal workers’ union — one of the country’s largest.
While the Communist Party of India (CPI)-linked All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) emerged as the winner in the Singareni Collieries Company Ltd (SCCL) trade union elections held Wednesday, the Congress-backed Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) came a strong second place.
Although the Congress and the CPI are partners in the INDIA bloc of opposition parties at the national level and had contested the Telangana assembly polls together, they went separate ways in the trade union elections, with the INTUC now accusing the CPI of colluding with the BRS to defeat it.
The Singareni coal workers’ union has 39,773 voters, of whom as many as 37,451 voted in a secret ballot Wednesday, registering a turnout of 94 percent. Counting began soon after the voting ended Wednesday evening.
The INTUC and the AITUC were in the poll arena under their local names — the Singareni Coal Mines Labour Union and the Singareni Collieries Workers Union, respectively.
Of the 11 divisions in the coal belt spread over north Telangana’s Khammam-Warangal-Karimnagar-Adilabad areas, five went to the AITUC and six to the INTUC. However, having secured 43.20 percent of the votes overall, the AITUC will be the recognised workers’ union of the SCCL. The INTUC received 37.86 percent of the votes.
The Bharat-Rashtra Samithi (BRS)-linked Telangana Boggu Ghani Karmika Sangham (TBGKS), which was victorious in the 2012 and 2017 union elections, suddenly became inactive after the BRS’s loss in the state polls and was decimated this time.
In the 2017 polls, TBGKS had won nine divisions, but this time, it secured a vote share of just 3.47 percent. BRS MLC and former Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao’s daughter, K. Kavitha, is the honorary president of TBGKS.
As many as 13 unions were in the fray, including the Communist Party of India (Marxist)-backed Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) and the Sangh Parivar’s Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS).
The Singareni coal belt overlaps 11 assembly segments in Telangana, of which the BRS could win only one this time. Nine went to the Congress and one to its partner, the CPI.
Purported moves to privatise the coal mining company in north Telangana had become one of the issues in the polls.
SCCL is jointly owned by the Telangana government and the central government on a 51:49 equity basis. The BRS has been accusing the Narendra Modi government of making veiled attempts to privatise the only coal-producing company in southern India, pointing to the open auction of mines.
BRS’ ‘withdrawal’ & Congress’ ‘initial disinterest’
The union polls, after a two-year delay, were scheduled to be held in October but according to Janak Prasad, general secretary of INTUC, Singareni, the SCCL management and the Telangana government pushed for postponement then too, “citing lame excuses like the impending assembly elections”.
The process of nominations and ballot papers was completed then.
The state polls were won by the Congress and the new Revanth Reddy government, which took over in early December, reportedly argued in the Telangana High Court for the trade union elections to be held in March 2024. The court declined the request last week and the polls were conducted Wednesday.
A few days ahead of the polls, three key TBGKS leaders — president Venkat Rao, general secretary Miryala Raji Reddy and working president K. Mallaiah — resigned from their posts “in protest against the BRS leadership’s decision to sit out the polls”.
“Kavitha conveyed to us ‘KCR’s decision’ to stay away from the elections. They were apparently apprehensive of a defeat as the cadres, too, were dejected with the assembly poll loss. We decided to resign as there is no point in leading a union which sits out the polls,” Miryala told ThePrint Thursday.
The three reportedly planned to join the INTUC but shelved the idea along with the decision to resign from the TBGKS “after a top BRS leader’s request”. Several lower-level leaders and workers of the union have, however, moved into the AITUC and INTUC camps.
While Kavitha did not canvass for the polls, Miryala said the call given to BRS/TBGKS supporters “was to vote with their conscience”.
Some reports claimed that a day before the polls, BRS/TBGKS functionaries at local levels were directed to extend support to CPI’s AITUC “in order to keep the Congress’s INTUC out”.
Speaking to ThePrint, Janak Prasad said: “The BRS and the CPI colluded to defeat us. The 2,000-odd votes the AITUC received over us is the result of this grouping. Otherwise, it would have been the INTUC leading the union this time.”
ThePrint reached Kavitha and Kunamneni Sambasiva Rao — the CPI legislator from Kothagudem, one of the assembly segments in the Singareni coal belt — over the phone for their responses to the TBGKS and INTUC leaders’ statements. This report will be updated when a response is received.
A national-level INTUC leader told ThePrint: “While the BRS and the CPI were in such collusion, our Congress’s Telangana leaders and ministers who had just assumed power appeared disinterested in the Singareni polls. Regrettably, the new Congress government, too, wanted the polls to be postponed again. We had to prevail upon the CM to take Singareni seriously”.
Later, cabinet ministers Duddilla Sridhar Babu and Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy campaigned in Singareni, interacting with miners and making promises of housing sites and interest-free loans.
The alleged Singareni privatisation attempt was one of the issues talked about but was said to not be of any immediate concern in the present polls.
“The privatisation fears are long-term, based on perceptions arising out of mine auctions (instead of allocation to government companies) and other moves like outsourcing some works,” a trade union leader told ThePrint.
Even as the BRS accused the BJP-led central government of planning the SCCL’s privatisation, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, speaking at a public event in Ramagundam in November 2022, had said that there was no such proposal.
“Some vested elements are spreading false narratives about the state-owned collieries company for their selfish political motives,” he had said.
Despite losing the top spot to the AITUC, the INTUC’s impressive show in the union polls, Congress leaders believe, will help the party in the general elections. The Singareni coal mines are dottted across five of Telangana’s 17 Lok Sabha constituencies.
TBGKS leaders are, meanwhile, mulling options.
“In the wake of poll-time developments, keeping our supporting workers and their interests in mind, we are considering running the TBGKS without BRS affiliation. However, we are still open to discussions with Kavitha or KCR on the matter,” said Miryala.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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