Already over crowded political scene of Telangana will soon have another new entrant making the next elections a mutli cornered contest.
The CPI Marxist, one of the two major left parties in the State, will join hands with 28 smaller parties and mass organisations to launch Bahujan left Front in the State to fight against the other major parties including the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samiti, the Congress and the BJP.
However the Communist Party of India (CPI) will not be part of this front, creating another vertical divide with in the left rank. While the CPIM has listed the Congress among its ideological opponents, the CPI was not in agreement with this view and was likely to go with the Congress in the next elections.
The proposed Front to be launched on January 25 will treat all the three major parties as “anti democratic, anti secular and dictatorial”. It may be recalled here that in 2014 polls, the left was wiped out completely with CPIM winning just one assembly seat and CPI drawing a blank.
CPIM State Secretary T Veerabhadram said the Bahujan left Front will contest all the 119 assembly seats and 17 lok Sabha seats.
The move has come at a time when the Telangana Joint Action Committee convenor Prof Kodandraram Reddy was also planning to launch his own political party.
Apart from the TRS, Congress and the BJP, the 2019 electoral battle for Telangana was likely to see many other players including the MIM, the much weakened Telugu Desam party (either in tie up with the BJP or alone), Jana Sena Party of film star Pawan Kalyan, Kodandaram’s proposed party.
The new CPIM led front will come as a set back to the strategy of Congress which was trying to ensure that all the non TRS, non BJP parties come together to avoid the splintering of the votes.
The CPI’s strategy appears to be much closer to the Congress stand to fight against the “dictatorial rule” of TRS President and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and the communal politic of the BJP. CPI state Secretary Chada Venkat Reddy was also of the view that more the parties in the fray, merrier it would be for the TRS. “The division of the opposition votes will be an advantage for the ruling party”, he said.
Giving an inclination of the party’s thinking he said that while at the national level the BJP was the main ideological enemy of the left, in the state it was the “undemocratic, dictatorial family rule” of KCR which needs to be fought against.