‘Brs-congress tie-up possible for Lok Sabha polls’

‘However, a decision will be taken after the upcoming Assembly elections later this year’.

As there is strong support from Opposition camps for Rahul Gandhi, leaders of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), the ruling party in Telangana, have said that an alliance could be possible for Lok Sabha polls. However, the decision will be taken after the upcoming Assembly elections later this year.

A BRS leader said, “If there is an alliance, the Congress will have to accept the role of a junior partner and accept the seat share given to it.”

However, Congress leaders believe the alliance will further degrade its cadre strength; although the state leadership denies any possibility of an alliance. “If there is a command from the top, then everybody has to comply by it. And we will have to contest in alliance with the BRS,” a Congress leader said.

Political observers feel that if the Congress fails to perform and is pushed back to number three position in the Assembly elections and gets lesser seats than the BJP, it will leave no option for the grand old party but to ally with the BRS as the main Opposition space in the state will be taken by the BJP. “Congress and BJP cannot be in Opposition together. Someone will have to ally with K. Chandrashekhar Rao, and it will be the Congress that will choose the side of BRS.”

Political analysts further say that there are sentiments against the Congress, as voters in the state think if they vote for the Congress, their MLAS will jump either into the BJP or Bharat Rashtra Samithi.

“Such sentiments will play against the Congress in the Assembly elections,” a political analyst said.

Moreover, in a closed door meet, KCR had once resented to make 12 Congress leaders defect into his party. He said, it has created space for BJP to become the main opposition.

All the anti-incumbency votes which would have gone to the Congress, would now be taken by the BJP. A BRS leader said, “The image that has been created among the voters is that if they vote for the Congress, they would defect into the BJP.”

The main agenda of all the opposition camps is that: “They must remove the BJP.” And to achieve that, a senior leader in BRS said an understanding between the Opposition camps is very necessary. The idea of alliance is also resonating in the saffron camp as Amit Shah had told its party leadership in the state that Bharat Rashtra Samithi and Congress may come together and the cadre has to be ready if there is any such alliance.

BJP currently holds 4 lok sabha seats out of the 17. And its leadership, according to analysts in the state, would take full advantage of the political base it has been building up.

An analyst said, “They will certainly want to win more than four seats this time as they know their share will get reduced from Bihar and Maharashtra where the BJP was in alliance with JDU and Shiv Sena respectively. As they have broken their alliance with these parties, they will have to compensate for it from other states and Telangana is also one of those states where BJP is doing everything to spread its political base.”