In spite of the recent spat between TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao and his BJP counterpart Amit Shah, the latter party has expressed willingness to consult the TRS on fielding a joint candidate in the Presidential election.
Senior BJP leader and Union Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya told a media conference here on Sunday that his party would talk to Mr. Rao just as it had consulted all other Opposition parties seeking a consensus on the candidate.
Mr. Dattatreya, however, took exception to the survey result disclosed by Mr. Rao which gave TRS 111 out of 119 seats in 2019 Assembly elections and said it was a government-sponsored survey much on the lines of the one commissioned by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1977. She went to the polls with similar findings in the same year and received a drubbing.
TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu had also boasted on the basis of a survey result that the TDP-BJP alliance would win with astonishing figures in 2004. But, it was proved way off the mark.
The Union Minister said he would leave the survey by Mr. Rao to his faith but public perception was totally different. The BJP was in an unassailable position because of the growing stature of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. An independent project by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies showed that 44% of Indian population wanted Mr. Modi as Prime Minister. Mr. Modi enjoyed the support of only 2% people in the 2009 elections but it grew to 36% in the 2014 polls. This survey would apply to Telangana also, he added.
Mr. Dattatreya said Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao had exposed his anger and frustration at the good response to Mr. Amit Shah’s tour in Telangana. Mr. Rao tried to reassure himself but failed to convince the people of the State in his one-and-a-half-hour press conference to rebut Mr. Shah’s claims.
Warning that Mr. Rao had used up all the weapons in his armoury during his three-year rule, Mr. Dattatreya said the Opposition had many of them to target the government before elections. The BJP, in particular, would have a lot of political space and would emerge an alternative to the TRS in 2019.
