With the Telangana Rashtra Samithi’s (TRS) K Chandrashekhar Rao unilaterally announcing candidates for both, Assembly and Lok Sabha seats in Telangana, the Congress party said it is ready to contest the elections on its own from the region.
Senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh, who is charge of the Congress in Telangana, spoke at an event organised in the Hyderabad Press Club on Friday. “We are prepared for any eventuality and ready to field candidates in all the seats,” he said, in a firm indication that there will be no pre-poll alliance between the Congress and the TRS.
Earlier, Singh said Rao had assured the Congress that he would merge his party with theirs since the main purpose of the TRS’s existence was achieved with the creation of Telangana.
Singh told journalists that Rao himself had assured Congress president Sonia Gandhi of the merger. “Now that they don’t want to do it, we respect their political decision,” he said, reflecting the changed position.
Keeping doors open for any last minute seat adjustments, Singh said TRS leader and Rajya Sabha MP, K Kesava Rao, who was heading the TRS committee on alliances, would soon meet him to discuss possibilities. “He was supposed to meet me in New Delhi, but could not do so,” he said, adding that AK Antony’s committee would anyhow deal with such consultations at the national level.
Regarding the comments of Jairam Ramesh that a Dalit should be made the first Chief Minister of Telangana—which ruffled feathers inside the TRS—a non committal Singh, said, “Jairam has a certain way of expression …which, sorry, I don’t have.”
Singh abstained from being harsh on former chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy, who recently quit the Congress. He said Reddy free to take his own position just as nearly all political parties changed their opinion on Telangana, once the Congress okayed dividing AP. “But what hurt us most is that he left the party and launched another outfit.”