K Chandrasekhar Rao to forge front against alliance'
The strategy is to split the anti-TRS vote and prevent it from consolidating with the Congress-led Grand Alliance.
Hyderabad: Telengana Rashtra Samiti chief and caretaker Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has firmed up a master plan to beat the Opposition’s ‘Mahakutami’ (Grand Alliance) in the Assembly polls.
Mr Rao is making efforts to forge a ‘Third Front’ comprising social and caste organisations of Backward Classes, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Minority communities.
Interestingly, this Third Front conceived by Mr Rao is not an alliance comprising of the TRS but of other parties and caste organisations.
The strategy is to split the anti-TRS vote and prevent it from consolidating with the Congress-led Grand Alliance.
Caretaker ministers K.T. Rama Rao and T. Harish Rao are learnt to be holding discussions with BC leader R. Krishnaiah, Madiga Reservation Porata Samiti leader Manda Krishna Madiga, Bahujan Left Front leader Tammineni Veerabhadram and balladeer Gaddar for forging the Third Front. Mr Krishnaiah is being proposed as the Third Front’s chief ministerial candidate.
TRS sources said that the need for the new front arose after the surveys ordered by Mr Rao indicated that the anti-TRS vote was consolidating with the Congress, TS, Telangana Jana Samiti and the CPI combine, and not with the BJP.
The surveys ordered by Mr Rao revealed that in almost all the constituencies, it will be a straight fight between the TRS and the Congress-led Grand Alliance and there is no scope for the BJP to split the anti-TRS votes.
The reports alerted Mr Rao, who feels that a straight fight between the TRS and the Grand Alliance would be dangerous, and the party needs to forge an alternative front to split the anti-TRS votes between the Grand Alliance and Third Front.
Sources revealed that the TRS has offered to take Third Front winners into the Cabinet and to offer other nominated posts if the situation demands it, to prevent the grand alliance from forming the government if no party can secure an absolute majority. However, Mr Manda Krishna Madiga of the MRPS is believed to be opposed to being part of the TRS-engineered Third Front.