Amid the growing clamour for Opposition unity after the change in political equation in Bihar, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao called on his Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar to plan a strategy to bring non-Congress parties together to take on the Modi Government in 2024 polls.
The TRS leader shared the dais at a public event in Patna with Nitish and his deputy Tejashwi Yadav. He also met RJD chief Lalu Prasad at his residence.
The Nitish-KCR meeting is being seen as an important step in the direction of achieving Opposition unity. When reporters bombarded KCR with questions about whether he was planning a third front, Nitish chipped in saying, “It’s going to be the main front.”
Nitish is reportedly in close contact with the Congress’ high command and may try to convince KCR to take on board the Congress to defeat Modi.
It will be interesting to see the outcome of the KCR-Nitish meeting. Since KCR is rooting for a third front and Nitish is favouring a broad-based unity of the Opposition parties, the two leaders have miles to cover before they reach some understanding on evolving a joint strategy to take on the BJP.
While KCR has been lobbying for a third front and holding talks with the likes of Mamata Banerjee, MK Stalin, Arvind Kejriwal, Uddhav Thackeray, Sharad Pawar, and Akhilesh Yadav, Nitish is reportedly in favour of bringing together the entire Opposition camp, including the Congress, under one umbrella.
BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi took a dig at his former boss Nitish and KCR saying their meeting is a “get-together of two daydreamers”. Modi said it is a meeting of two leaders who are losing their base in their respective States and “desiring to become Prime Minister of the country”.
“It is a meeting of two daydreamers who have no standing in front of Prime Minister Narendra Modi,” the Rajya Sabha member said. He also dubbed the meeting the “latest comedy show of Opposition unity.”
KCR called for a “BJP-mukt Bharat”, blaming the saffron party’s Government at the Centre for the many ills plaguing the country. At a press conference later which he addressed in the presence of Nitish, whom he fondly called “bade bhai” (big brother), Rao skirted questions about who will lead a united Opposition and whether the Congress will be taken on board.
To a pointed query about whether the Bihar CM, who dumped the BJP earlier this month, could be considered as the prime ministerial candidate of the opposition, KCR evaded a direct reply but said “Nitish Kumar is among the senior-most and best leaders in the country. We will decide these things later”.
“These things will be decided in due course. We are in no hurry,” said Rao, in reply to questions about the prime ministerial candidate and the role of the Congress, to which the TRS is bitterly opposed.
Nitish and KCR addressed a public event where the duo lashed out at the Narendra Modi government in the Centre and criticised its “excessive prachaar-prasaar” (publicity) besides its alleged lack of sensitivity towards the needs of the states. KCR took a veiled dig at BJP which has undertaken an aggressive campaign to expand its base in the southern state.
Kumar’s speech was preceded by KCR giving cheques of Rs 10 lakh each to five soldiers from the state who were killed in the stand-off with Chinese troops in the Galwan valley of Ladakh in 2020. KCR also gave away cheques of Rs five lakh each to family members of 12 migrant labourers from Bihar who died in a fire in Hyderabad in March.
In his brief speech in Hindi, KCR referred to Bihar as being the land of “kranti” (revolution) and said his home State was the land of the Godavari river, called the “Ganga of the south while the holy river itself flowed through the eastern province”.
KCR also ridiculed Modi for having uttered “Ab ki baar Trump sarkaar” during a visit to the US many years ago, calling it a “diplomatic blunder”.