Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao, who has been camping in Delhi for the past few days, met Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy and Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) spokesperson Rakesh Tikait on Thursday, amidst talks about his efforts to construct an anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) forum ahead of the 2024 general elections.
According to sources, Mr. Rao will be meeting other political leaders in the next few days in the national capital. He had also sought an appointment with Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal but could not meet him since Mr. Kejriwal is in Bengaluru.
His Delhi sojourn comes days after his tour to Mumbai, where he met Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) patriarch Sharad Pawar. Mr. Rao also had two rounds of meeting with election strategist Prashant Kishor, and actor and activist Prakash Raj.
The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), in the last seven years since the Narendra Modi government came to power, has been soft on the BJP in Parliament, often siding with them on critical and controversial legislation. The party’s stance changed since the November 2020 byelections in Telangana, when it was defeated in Huzurabad by its own former leader Eatala Rajender, who joined the BJP.
This was wake-up call to the TRS on the growing presence of the BJP in the State. In the 2018 Assembly elections, the BJP secured only 7% votes but this grew to 20% in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The State will have Assembly elections in December 2023, just ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. At such a junction, Mr. Rao wants to acquire an unambiguous position against the BJP.
