Cong may form front with TDP
HYDERABAD: The Congress in Telangana indicated Thursday that it was not against forming an alliance with Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party, which will discuss this in the next few days. The two parties have previously expressed their interest in being part of a federal front to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
In the wake of fast-paced political developments in Telangana, where chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao (popular as KCR) dissolved the assembly, setting the state for fresh polls almost nine months ahead of schedule, local leaders of the TDP rushed to neighbouring Andhra Pradesh for talks with party chief Naidu.
Amid frenetic speculations, Telangana Congress spokesperson Sravan Dasoju said, “We are not averse to joining hands with any democratic force or party, including the TDP, to pull down the KCR government.”
Naidu, Andhra Pradesh’s chief minister, an ally-turned-rival of the BJP, will meet Telangana TDP leaders in Hyderabad on Saturday.
“We will decide on alliances after that,” news agency Press Trust of India quoted TDP general secretary E Peddi Reddy as saying. Telangana CM Rao said it would be “shameful” for the parties to join hands with the sole objective of defeating him.
“The TDP has absolutely no presence in the state now. The
Congress will be the biggest loser if it allies with the Telugu Desam Party, as the people are aware how the TDP government in the neighbouring Andhra Pradesh was creating hurdles to the projects of Telangana. How can the Telangana Congress have an alliance with an Andhra party like TDP?” he asked. In the 2014 Telangana state elections, the Telugu Desam Party, which was formed in 1982 with an anti-Congress stand, was in alliance with the BJP. It had won 15 seats in the 119-member Telangana assembly, but 12 of its MLAs later defected to Rao’s Telangana Rashtra Samithi, while another joined the Congress.