About TRS Party

Telangana Rashtra Samithi (pronounced [telaṅgaːna raːʃʈra samiti]; transl. Telangana State Council; abbr. TRS) is an Indian regional political party which is predominantly active in the state of Telangana. It was founded on 27 April 2001 by K. Chandrashekar Rao, with a single-point agenda of creating a separate Telangana state with Hyderabad as its capital.^[11] It has been instrumental in carrying forth a sustained agitation for the granting of statehood to Telangana.^[12]

In the 2014 Telangana Assembly Election, the party won a majority of seats and formed the first government of the state with K. Chandrashekar Rao as its chief minister. In the 2014 general election the party won 11 seats, making it the eighth largest party in Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian Parliament.

After a landslide victory in 2018 Telangana Legislative Assembly election, the party formed the government in the state for the second time.^[13] In the 2019 Indian general election, the party’s tally has fallen to 9 seats in the Lok Sabha.^[14] As of September 2020, the party holds 7 seats in upper house of Rajya Sabha.^[15]

Ideology

On 27 April 2001, Rao resigned as Deputy Speaker of the Telugu Desam Party.^[16] He opined that Telangana people were being categorically discriminated against within the undivided state of Andhra Pradesh. Consequently, Rao argued that only the creation of a separate state of Telangana would allow for the alleviation of the people’s predicament.^[17] Accordingly, KCR founded the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) Party at Jala Drushyam, Hyderabad in April 2001, with the objective of achieving statehood for Telangana.^[16] The party initially won one-third of Mandal Parishad Territorial Constituencies (MPTC) and one-quarter of Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituencies (ZPTC) in Siddipet within sixty days of the formation of the party.^[18]