TL polls: Cong alliance partners determined to make the grouping click

One of the things being hotly debated in Telangana is whether partners in the Congress-led alliance, which collectively had more vote share than the TRS in the last poll, would succeed in vote transfer among them.

The ruling TRS (Telangana Rashtra Samiti) had 34.3 per cent vote share in the 2014 elections, while the Congress and the TDP recorded 25.2 and 14.7 per cent, respectively.

TDP had an alliance with the BJP last time around. The Amit Shah-led party is going alone in the December seven elections to the 119-member Assembly, as also the TRS.

The Congress, the TDP, the Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS) and the Communist Party of India (CPI) have forged "Prajakutami" (People's Alliance) to take on the TRS.

The AICC In-charge of Telangana, R C Khuntia, said it's the "compulsion" that brought the parties of the alliance together and he expects the grouping to work with cohesion to put it across the TRS.

"People are very unhappy with the way TRS and KCR (as caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao is popularly known) handled the state.. they just want to throw him (KCR) out," Khuntia told PTI.

Referring to the vote share of the Congress and the TDP in the last elections, senior TDP politburo member Ravula Chandrasekhar Reddy said with the CPI and TJS on board, the alliance was "very strong."
TRS leader K T Rama Rao, considered number two in his party, dubbed the Congress-led grouping as an "opportunistic alliance based on a bundle of contradictions."
Sudhakar Reddy dismissed Rama Rao's contention as "normal pre-election rhetoric."