Venkaiah denies truck with TDP

Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader M. Venkaiah Naidu has denied that there is any proposal either from the BJP or the Telugu Desam for an alliance and dubbed the reports about the likelihood of the two parties moving closer as “speculative”.

Answering a volley of questions on the issue at a press conference here on Thursday, he said that as decided earlier, the State BJP was going ahead with its preparations for contesting all the 42 Lok Sabha and 294 Assembly seats on its own.

The State unit had so far completed 16 Lok Sabha conventions in this regard, he added.

On the demand of some State BJP leaders that the Centre should resolve grievances of people from Seemandhra region before introducing the Bill on Telangana, he said the party too was of the same opinion. While agreeing with the need to allay the fears of Seemandhra people, he said there was no rethinking on the bifurcation issue in the party and it was committed to creating Telangana State.

Mr. Naidu hit out at the UPA government for leaking top confidential report about covert intelligence operations in Jammu and Kashmir and demanded action against those involved in it.

Flays proposed meet with Sharif

The BJP leader said the proposed meeting of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with his Pakistani counterpart was totally against the mood of the nation. In the backdrop of 26/11 accused taking shelter and moving freely in Pakistan, crossing of the LoC more than 100 times by Pakistan army and the latest incident of killing of 12 security personnel in Jammu on Thursday, he sought to know the basis on which the Prime Minister would like to hold talks.

He said “talks and terror can’t go together”.

There was no meaning holding talks till Pakistan delivered on its promise of not allowing terrorist groups to operate from its soil and handed over to India the masterminds behind the Mumbai incident.