Merger or alliance? Congress, TRS haggle as negotiations start

Hyderabad: Emerging out of 10 Janpath after paying obeisance to the ‘presiding deity’ Sonia Gandhi, president of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) K Chandrasekhar Rao credited her with ‘doling out’ Telangana. Rao, who uses the choicest of words to make either laudatory or derisive or vituperative remarks, acknowledged that he, along with his family members, met and thanked Sonia, and she, in return, ‘blessed me’. There were no politics discussed, but both leaders kept the door ajar. [caption id=“attachment_1405627” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Chandrasekhar Rao is pushing for a tie up rather than a merger: PTI[/caption] Digvijaya Singh will take over from this point to take the deal between the Congress and the TRS forward. Whether the deal will end up being a merger, acquisition of stake or a reverse-merger (allowing TRS to be the major partner) will only be known a few days from now. Rao disclosed that he would be around in Delhi for the next two to three days. That leaves the Congress with ample opportunity to work out modalities to amalgamate the sub-regional outfit, the pivot of the Telangana movement, into itself. Against this background, the Congress has pressed its opinion-makers into service to get him on board and close the deal as quickly as possible. It doesn’t want a repeat of a Mamata Banerjee, who after breaking away from Congress, still maintained a relation shipwith her political alma mater in West Bengal until she emerged strong on her own. Former Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) President D Srinivas has said he hopes that the TRS would be merged with Congress. Ditto Karimnagar MP Ponnam Prabhakar, Nizamabad MP Madhu Yaskhi Goud and many other Telangana Congress leaders, who have begun talking of ‘credibility in politics’ and exuding confidence that Rao will not go back on his promise of merging his party with the Congress, now that Telangana has been created. Warangal MLA and Government Chief Whip Gandra Venataramana Reddy has proposed an equation: The total number of existing legislators in the respective kitties of both parties will remain intact – about 50 with the Congress and 22 with the TRS – in respect of Assembly seats. The remaining 40-odd seats would be shared equally. The TRS may not be averse to this, though there are likely to be a few individual seats where there may prove to be a hitch. Similarly, K Chandrasekhar Rao will not want to end up like Chiranjeevi who has been left playing second fiddle to Congress leaders after his Praja Rajyam Party was ‘gobbled up’ by the grand old party. The TRS, incidentally, has never had a history of contesting all the seats in the region – either for the Assembly or for the Lok Sabha. The party hitchhiked on the Congress and contested 46 seats to win only 26, when YS Rajasekhara Reddy was riding on the crest of his popularity in Andhra Pradesh 2004. In fact, Dr Reddy was opposed to doling out so many seats to the TRS, but he had to yield ground to the demand of Telangana leaders. But the TRS fell out with the Congress in just a couple of years, with Rao resigning from his seat and forcing a bypoll on Karimnagar Lok Sabha constituency, which he represented. Meanwhile, YSR Reddy lured some 10 TRS MLAs on to the Congress side and managed to hold onto the flock for a long time. Ever since, the bitterness between the Congress and the TRS was so intense that Rao spared no occasion to spew venom at the Congress. Now that KCR is heaping encomiums on Congress president Sonia Gandhi, there cannot be a better occasion to strike the proverbial iron. Given the quaint ways of Rao, an astute politician who ran a movement without being in power for 13 long years and saw that it bore fruit, it is essential that Congress does not to lose grip over the vote bank he nursed. His political moves are very quirky and have always been replete with surprises. Even after falling out with the Congress, he continued his love-hate relationship with the grand old party. As the elections approached in 2009, in spite of YSR Reddy’s ‘open offer’ from the floor of the Assembly that the Congress was ready to bend backwards and continue its ‘friendship’ with him, he went ahead and partnered the ‘Grand Alliance’(mahaa kutami) under the aegis of the Telugu Desam Party, which also brought the Communists into its fold. Then shocking pollsters and people alike, he snapped ties with the Grand Alliance and shared a dais with NDA leaders almost immediately after the polling was over. However, to his utter consternation, the poll outcome jolted the TRS, as it contested 50 seats and won a niggardly 10. YSR Reddy was at his sarcastic best in the Assembly while pouring scorn on KCR and asserted that the Congress was the only party which had commitment with regard to Telangana. Coming to February 2014, the already-bullish Congress wants to curry favour with the voters in Telangana and do not want to lose out on the possible value-addition by the TRS, at any cost. However, Rao, who also doesn’t like to go it alone to the polls, is said to be bringing forth his political adroitness to derive maximum benefit out of the deal. Though he is ‘open to go by whatever Sonia Gandhi desires to do’ on this issue, he is said to be under the impression that an alliance would do well rather than a merger. He is of the view that the merger would vindicate the claim of his bête noire N Chandrababu Naidu that the TDP was existent in both regions of the State and that the TRS would merge with the Congress. That the BJP is yet to gain ground and the YSR Congress is almost non-existent in Telangana are coming in handy for the TRS to put across its argument effortlessly. But, the Congress poll managers are pushing KCR in to a corner asking what difference a merger or a tie-up would make, as the two parties would fight the polls together in any case. The TDP can attract those whose hopes were dashed owing to the merger. Even the YSR Congress may try to open its account with the help of the disgruntled lot from both TRS and the Congress. The BJP is, in any case, waiting with its arms wide open to embrace any new comers.