Congress dumps allies, to contest all 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana

HYDERABAD:FOLLOWING the failure of Maha Kootami (grand alliance) experiment in the recent assembly elections in Telangana, the Congress party has decided to go it alone in the ensuing parliament elections in Telangana and contest all the 17 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

Senior leaders of the Pradesh Congress Committee including PCC chief N Uttam Kumar Reddy, working presidents A Revanth Reddy, Ponnam Prabhakar, Mohammad Azharuddin and J Kusuma Kumar, had a meeting with Congress president Rahul Gandhi to discuss the strategy for the coming parliament elections in the state, besides finalisation of candidates.

“There will be absolutely no alliance with any other party in so far as parliament elections are concerned. The party has decided to field candidates in all the 17 LS seats in the state,” senior PCC leader Guduru Narayana Reddy said.

According to him, many party leaders have felt that the alliance with other parties, especially the Telugu Desam Party, at the eleventh hour had done more damage to the Congress than good.

“The experiment did not work out. So, we have decided to go alone in the parliament elections,” he said.

The Telangana TDP, however, reacted cautiously to the Congress suggestion. “Let their high command take a decision on continuing or discontinuing the alliance with us. It is not in the hands of the Telangana PCC but will be decided by Rahul Gandhi and our party president N Chandababu Naidu,” Telangana TDP general secretary and former MP Chandrasekhar Reddy Ravula said.