Pact with PK is to oust common enemy, says TD; BJP remains silent

Vijayawada: With Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan having expressed his intent to have an unconditional electoral pact with Telugu Desam, a section of TD is willing to accept the proposal, though it is yet to be officially announced, as it would be a mutually beneficial alliance.

TD leaders say that as they are having a common political rival in the YSRC, they want to forge a strong force of all like-minded parties to contain the might of the ruling party. However, they foresee difficulties at the time of allotment of seats as TD may have to sacrifice some seats to Jana Sena and vice-versa. Reportedly, in the interest of the alliance, they may zero in on candidates with the best winning prospects.

State general secretary of TD Gorantla Butchaiah Choudhary said, “As our aim is to dethrone Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Reddy from power, we will join forces with other political parties. Moreover, sharing of segments with other parties may not be a major issue as we all are working with a common objective-unseating the YSRC government.”

Meanwhile, some TD leaders appreciated Pawan Kalyan for clarifying that he won't be insisting on the position of chief minister without having at least 30 to 40 seats of their own.

TD state president K. Atchannaidu said, “Though Pawan Kalyan has come clear on his position with regard to our alliance, we are yet to discuss the issue. Since it is a major policy decision, N. Chandrababu Naidu will take the final call on the issue and we will go by it.”

On the other hand, BJP state chief Somu Veerraju said that they had informed the party national leadership about Pawan Kalyan’s decision and the party’s central leadership would take a final decision on the issue.

However, political analysts say that the Jana Sena chief had intentionally expressed his intent on Friday as the top BJP leadership was preoccupied with the assessment on poll results in Karnataka, just to test their response. So far, the BJP top leadership is tight-lipped on the issue even as the Karnataka election results went in favour of the Congress.