After meeting the chief ministers of Odisha and West Bengal over the last two days, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) President and Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao is trying to reach out to Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati to forge a “federal front” ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Mr. Rao has been working to cobble together a non-BJP, non-Congress front, claiming that such a platform will increase the bargaining power of regional parties.
“Only the date and time needs to be fixed but we have reached out to both and our CM will be meeting them soon,” B. Vinod Kumar, TRS’ Karimnagar MP told
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To meet Modi
The Telangana Chief Minister arrived in the national capital on Monday night after meeting Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata. This Monday’s meeting was his second with Ms. Banerjee after his tour to Kolkata in March this year. Mr. Rao had described his meeting with the West Bengal Chief Minister to start a dialogue to “unite forces across the nation”.
He is also slated to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday — their first meeting after the TRS swept the Telangana polls.
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“It is just a courtesy call to the Prime Minister and should not be seen as a meeting with a BJP leader. It does not take away from our efforts to construct a federal front of regional parties,” Mr Kumar added. “Akhilesh ji had come to Hyderabad to meet our CM just few months back and we have been in touch with Mayawati ji continuously,” the TRS leader said.
Second round
With this week’s meetings, Mr. Rao has commenced a second round of meetings with regional leaders. The first set of meetings were held between March and May this year.
“The idea of a federal front is a long drawn process... regional political parties are taken for granted by so called national parties, who show a big brother attitude. And we feel that when we work together in a coordinated fashion, we will have a better bargaining power,” Mr. Kumar said.
During the first round of meetings Mr. Rao had also flown down to Chennai to have a chat with Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) president M.K. Stalin in April this year. However, after Mr Stalin’s recent statement proposing Congress president Rahul Gandhi as the opposition’s prime ministerial candidate, there are no plans for a second round of discussion with him.
The Congress has often labelled the TRS as the BJP’s B-team, and has criticised it for trying to drive a wedge in the opposition unity.
“The Congress must remember that that the TRS is the only party which has not had any alliance with BJP since our inception. Whereas each party like DMK, Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati has worked both with the BJP and the Congress,” Mr Kumar pointed out.