Vijayawada: The Telugu Desam and Jana Sena parties are holding seat-sharing talks for the upcoming Assembly and Lok Sabha polls in the state. The lists of contestants are likely to be announced soon.
Telugu Desam president Nara Chandrababu Naidu and JS chief Pawan Kalyan met at the latter’s residence in Hyderabad on Tuesday. They would continue the meeting in the coming days and release the list of contestants.
Both the leaders are keeping themselves free from other engagements to concentrate on the lists’ finalisation.
Sources say the TD has come up with a list of 74 names for the Assembly seats while the Jana Sena has 32 nominees.
The first criterion is the winning chances while aspects like caste, community, region, ability to spend money for electioneering etc too would be considered while finalising the names.
The lists are likely to be released in two phases. The TD is likely to have a major share of the seats for contest out of the total 175 while the JS may be satisfied with 30-40 constituencies. The YSRC has released five lists of its nominees for the polls so far.
The TD and JS would release a common manifesto mainly covering the six points already announced by the TD and five points by JS. They may add a few more points at the final stage.
The BJP national leadership is yet to decide whether the party can have an alliance with the TD-JS combine. If the BJP is ready for an alliance with the TD-JS, there would be re-adjustments of constituencies between the TD and JS.
The AP Assembly starts its Budget Session on February 5. The TD-JS alliance is likely to announce their lists of contestants before this.
