PremiumHyderabad: Asserting that the BJP and the Congress will not win more than 150 and 100 seats in the upcoming general elections, Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) working president K.T. Rama Rao (KTR) on Thursday said a group of regional parties, or a federal front, will be in a much stronger position to leverage and put up their own prime ministerial candidate.
Maintaining that his father and Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao (KCR) was as good as prime minister Narendra Modi or Congress president Rahul Gandhi, KTR said that his father was not looking at the nation’s top post. “Am I saying that KCR garu is a prime ministerial candidate? No, probably not. Our line is very simple, that this (federal front) will set the tone in New Delhi," KTR said during an interaction with the press on Thursday.
The proposed federal front is an idea of KCR, which he announced last year, as a non-Congress and non-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) front. “The country is not in conformity with the idea that the only options to choose from are the BJP and the Congress. KCR garu has been talking to a lot of leaders, including Akhilesh Yadav, Mayawati, Mamata Banerjee, etc. The coalition era is set to continue," KTR said.
The BJP has “fallen from its high point", and instead of talking about its achievements, is talking about things such as the recent Pulawama (terror attack) and Ram Mandir issue, he added. “The BJP has almost no presence in south India, except in Karnataka, while the Congress is ruling in just a few states. These two are not really national parties, but more like regional parties with a larger presence."
When asked if any regional party leader (other than YSR Congress party chief Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy who said earlier that he will support the federal front) had so far agreed to join hands with KCR to form a federal front, KTR said things would become clear only after the general election results are announced in May.
He also added sectors such as health and agriculture, which are on the concurrent list, can be entirely made state issues, as the problems vary from state to state. “Things have not changed much in the last 70 years. The Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh will win about 50 seats, and other regional parties put together will have about 130 seats easily," KTR said.
In Telangana, the TRS is also looking to win 16 of the 17 Lok Sabha seats (except for the Hyderabad seat, which is a bastion of the All India Majilis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, with which it is on “friendly" terms). KTR also said that in Andhra Pradesh the YSRCP will win 20 Lok Sabha seats (out of 25), and that chief minister and Telugu Desam Party supremo N. Chandrababu Naidu will not win more than a handful of parliamentary segments.
