KCR meets Stalin in a bid to rally regional parties for federal front

Continuing his efforts to forge a regional front, Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) on Monday met Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief M.K. Stalin in Chennai. The meeting comes exactly a week after Rao met his Kerala counterpart and Left Democratic Front leader Pinarayi Vijayan.

DMK leaders, who did not want to be named, maintained that the meeting between KCR and Stalin was nothing but “a courtesy call” and that it was “not connected to politics”. However, a senior TRS functionary from Telangana, who requested anonymity, said KCR set out with the intention of talking to Stalin about a federal front.

B. Vinod Kumar, the TRS member of Parliament (MP) from the Karimnagar Lok Sabha seat who has been accompanying KCR, told Mint last Saturday that regional parties with the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) also might come out of their respective alliances, depending on election results, after 23 May.

“A new political confederation might come out,” he said.

Since last year, KCR has been talking about forming a non-BJP and non-Congress federal front, and has met a string of regional leaders including Andhra Pradesh-based YSR Congress Party president Y. S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, chief ministers H.D. Kumaraswamy (Karnataka), Mamata Banerjee (West Bengal) and Naveen Patnaik (Odisha), and Samajwadi Party supremo Akhilesh Yadav. In fact, Yadav and KCR even held a joint press conference after their meeting last year.

However, only Jagan Mohan Reddy has so far supported KCR’s idea, while Vijayan had said his meeting with KCR was “highly significant”.

“All the states have problems with the centre, not just us. A new government coming to the centre will have to follow the federal system and secularism. The state will back anyone who supports the development of the state,” Vijayan said after meeting KCR.

The senior TRS leader mentioned earlier said that KCR was simply going to put forth his idea of a federal front, and that the party is not expecting anything to materialize immediately. But he added that the formation of such a front will depend on how many seats regional parties and the NDA and UPA win in the Lok Sabha elections.

Sharan Poovanna from Bengaluru contributed to this story.