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New Delhi: Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao-led Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) party will not be part of the united opposition alliance for the 2024 Lok Sabha polls, the Congress’s Madhu Goud Yaskhi said Tuesday.
The former member of Parliament from Telangana, along with other state party leaders, was addressing the media at the Congress headquarters in Delhi, following a “strategy meeting” with the party’s central leadership.
“Kharge ji [Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge] and Rahul ji [former party president Rahul Gandhi] said there will not be any alliances with TRS [Telangana Rashtra Samithi, now renamed the Bharat Rashtra Samithi] party. TRS-BRS party are not going to be part of the national opposition alliance,” said Yaskhi.
Leaders of 15 parties — including the Congress, the Trinamool Congress (TMC), the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), the Shiv Sena (Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray), Samajwadi Party (SP) and others — met in Patna earlier this month, in what is being seen as a likely beginning to the formation of a united front of parties in opposition to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre.
The BRS was among the parties which skipped the meeting.
The Congress, which is in direct political rivalry with the BRS in Telangana, has also slammed the state’s ruling party for its entry into Maharashtra ahead of next year’s Lok Sabha and Maharashtra assembly elections.
In line with its bid to expand its footprint beyond Telangana, the BRS has been making aggressive efforts to build a base in neighbouring Maharashtra. Concerned about the division in opposition votes, Congress leaders from Maharashtra have also accused the BRS of being the BJP’s “B-team”, helping its prospects by dividing votes.
Yakshi too Tuesday accused the BRS of working with the Bharatiya Janata Party. “BRS-TRS party is working with BJP. BRS-BJP are nothing but one. Therefore there will not be any alliance,” the former MP said.
Meanwhile, the BRS too has criticised the opposition meeting in Patna.
“The fight [against the BJP] should be on principal issues before the country. Unfortunately, we are losing the plot there. We seem to be obsessed and worried about dislodging someone or putting somebody there and that should not be the agenda. The agenda should be how the basic priorities of the country have to be met,” BRS working president K.T. Rama Rao was quoted as saying by the media Sunday.
He added: “You should not be uniting against somebody. You should be uniting for something. What is that something, nobody is able to figure out.”
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Tackling Telangana
In a “strategy meeting” Tuesday, Kharge, Gandhi and Congress general secretary (organisation) K.C. Venugopal, held discussions with the party’s Telangana unit, led by state president Revanth Reddy.
The meeting came a day after the Congress inducted in its fold 35 BRS leaders, including former MP Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy and ex-Telangana minister, Jupally Krishna Rao.
Party leaders from Telangana told the media that the meeting was called to discuss the upcoming assembly elections in the state, scheduled to be held in December this year.
“Rahul ji has told us to get ready for elections. He told us to keep internal differences aside and fight unitedly,” the party’s Telangana in-charge Manikrao Thakare said.
Attacking the incumbent Telangana chief minister, Thakare added, “KCR in all the states, like Maharashtra, is joining BJP. In Maharashtra, where Congress is strong they are trying to help BJP. They are doing their programmes to hurt the Congress party and help BJP”
Interestingly, KCR had hosted an opposition rally in Telangana earlier this year, which was attended by leaders including Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav, AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal and Bhagwant Mann and Left leaders Pinarayi Vijayan and D. Raja.
(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)
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