We are neither friends, nor enemies of the BJP: Telangana CM Rao

From friends to enemies at one fell swoop? Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao thought that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was a friendly ally till the Lok Sabha elections, when BJP candidates defeated his daughter and sitting MP Kavitha in Nizamabad and his trusted aide B Vinod Kumar in Karimnagar. Speaking to his newly elected Lok Sabha members in Hyderabad earlier this week, he is said to have observed: “We are neither friends nor enemies with the BJP. They don’t need our support as they have sufficient strength in the Lok Sabha, so expect them to be lukewarm to our demands or requests.” 

BJP’s Telangana unit President K Laxman has added to the growing distance between the two groups. After a meeting with Amit Shah in Delhi earlier this week, Laxman is said to have commented that the BJP would definitely come to power in the state in 2023. “Now our focus is on Telangana and we will make every effort to capture power from TRS,” Laxman told reporters.

It hasn’t helped that KCR wanted to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi to invite him for the inauguration of the Kaleswaram irrigation project and was ready to come to Delhi, except that Modi‘s office communicated that the PM had no time to meet the Telangana CM. KCR was so annoyed that he called off his Delhi tour altogether and as a result, skipped the NITI Aayog meeting of chief ministers as well.