Oppn parties eye alliance to take on TRS in T’gana

HYDERABAD: The CPI, TDP and Telangana Jana Samithi will enter into a pre-poll alliance in Telangana and would like to have the CPI(M) and Congress on board in the antitrs front, a senior CPI leader said on Monday.

“We want first Telugu Desam Party (TDP), Communist Party of India (CPI) and Telangana Jana Samithi...we will join together, and we will invite the CPI-M also. And if there is a possibility, we would like to go with the Congress,” CPI National General Secretary Suravaram Sudhakar Reddy said.

Asked if such a pre-poll alliance was certain, the veteran Communist leader said, “Yes”.

On whether there were any “feelers” from the Congress on joining the alliance, Reddy said, “Not yet”.

Chief spokesperson of the Telangana Pradesh Congress Committee Sravan Dasoju said an electoral alliance with the TDP was “possible”. TDP supremo and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has left it to the Telangana unit of the party to take a call on the issue of alliance.

“You collectively decide. You think and decide what is in the interests of Telangana and the party and let me know and I will cooperate,” Naidu said, addressing the general body meeting of TDP'S Telangana unit here on Saturday.

In alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the last elections, the TDP had won 15 seats but 12 of its MLAS defected to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), making it a heavily depleted side.

A combative ruling TRS has already announced party candidates for 105 Assembly constituencies of the total of 119 constituencies. It had won 63 seats in the 2014 polls.

Significantly, TRS has so far not named candidates in four of the five segments held by the BJP.