After BSP chief Mayawati announced she would go solo in the next year’s Lok Sabha polls, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Wednesday got in high gear to bring together on one platform regional parties which may not be comfortable in joining hands with the Congress to put up a united challenge against the Modi Government at the Centre.
KCR held a massive rally at Khammam where the list of speakers itself sent a clear message of his intent to float an Opposition front minus the Congress. Rao’s emphasis on the formation of a BRS-propped Government as the alternative to the Modi Government clearly indicated that the Telangana leader was working on a plan in the run up to the Lok Sabha polls.
Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, AAP leader and Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Maan, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, his Kerala counterpart and CPI(M) leader Pinarayi Vijayan, and CPI’s D Raja were among senior Opposition leaders who addressed the rally.
All of them kept a safe distance from Congress leader Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo yatra.
The AAP sees the Congres as a main obstacle in its ambition to expand its base at the national level and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav has been evasive on the issue joining hands with the Congress, and the Left and the Congress are main rivals in the Marxist stronghold of Kerala. KCR had also invited JMM leader and Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren, but he chose not to turn up.
The Opposition leaders gave a clarion call for regime change at the Centre by dislodging the BJP in 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
Taunting the Central Government over a host of issues, including those on inter-State water and development issues, Rao, in his address said Prime Minister Narendra Modi would go home and a dispensation propped up by BRS shall stop initiatives like the “LIC disinvestment” and implement welfare measures like the Rythu Bandhu for farmers across the nation.
The meeting was carefully planned to elevate KCR as national leader, beyond the south. Amid sloganeering by cadres on BRS regime’s schemes on farmers’ welfare, the first public meeting of the ruling BRS went lively with political songs that hailed K Chandrashekar Rao’s national emergence.
The venue of the meeting here, which teemed with enthusiastic cadres and office-bearers, echoed with political songs in Hindi and some of them cheered to the tune of “Ek do theen chaar, desh ke neta KCR.”
In his speech, KCR was critical of both the Congress and BJP on the issue of interstate water issues. He focused on national issues that Rahul has been flagging during his Bharat Jodi yatra. For example, he said the ‘Make in India’ initiative has become a ‘Joke in India’ and declared that if the BRS proposed Government came to power at the centre the Agnipath scheme for recruitment in Armed forces would be abolished.
Rao also said free power would be provided to farmers across the country if a ‘BRS proposed government’ captured power at the Centre in 2024, following polls to the Lok Sabha. The emphasis on a BRS proposed Government at the Centre is seen as a clear giveaway to his national ambition. Schemes like Telangana’s Rythu Bandhu (for the welfare of farmers) should be implemented throughout the country and it is his party’s slogan and demand, KCR asserted. He also said the BRS is opposed to the ‘disinvestment of LIC’.
He slammed the BJP and Congress, alleging that both the parties are responsible for inter-State water issues.
Kejriwal said people of the country will have an opportunity to dislodge the NDA Government at the Centre in the 2024 general election. Tthe AAP leader said it is not the governors of some States who are troubling the elected Chief Ministers, but Modi, indicating that they act on the behest of the PM.
“Now, the country wants a change. People came to know that these people (NDA government) did not come to change the country. They just came to ruin the country. The 2024 elections are an opportunity for you (people). Ten years is over. How long will you wait?” Kejriwal said.
He advised the people to bring a Government that would think about the country, unemployment, healthcare and price rise.
The Delhi Chief Minister alleged that Modi is not concerned about the people’s issues but he is only thinking about which MLA has to be purchased and which government has to be brought down.
Akhilesh said Modi commented in his party’s national executive meet that only 400 days are left for the 2024 LS election. The ruling BJP has started ‘counting its days’ and it would not last a day more in power after its present tenure, Yadav said. “BJP will be out of power after 399 days and a new government will be in place on the 400th day,” Yadav said.
Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann said the country wanted jobs and the youth are jobless. Meanwhile, accusing the BJP-ruled Centre of ‘undoing’ the foundations of the nation’s democracy, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan called for a ‘new resistance’ to protect secularism, democracy and the Constitution and said people’s unity has to emerge against the communal agenda that seeks to divide the country.
Addressing the rally, the veteran CPI(M) leader alleged that the Centre was constantly “trying to destroy” the country’s federal structure and it was using the offices of Governors to target non-BJP State Governments.
This mammoth rally is being held at a time when the basic tenets of our Constitution are facing a series of threats from the people who are at the helm of affairs at the Centre, he said. “I hope that today, in Khammam, the land of people’s resistances, we will have the beginning of a new resistance, a resistance to secure the ideals that we fought for in our freedom struggle. A resistance to protect our secularism, our democracy, our Constitution and thereby our nation,” Vijayan said.
Without directly naming BJP, Vijayan said there is a “peculiar situation” in which a political formation that was not part of our national freedom struggle is in power in the country.
Charging that the followers of those who tendered unconditional apologies to the colonisers and promised to serve the imperial crown are at the helm of affairs today, he said they have been and remain “antagonistic” to the values of the anti-colonial struggle.