With the elections to Telangana assembly just a month away, the opposition in the state seem to be still clueless with regard to forging a grand alliance or Maha Kootami to put up a common fight in the elections.
By dodging on the number of seats to be allotted to the alliance partners – the Telugu Desam Party, the CPI and Telangana Jana Sena, the Congress party appears to be pushing them to a corner and forcing them to agree for the paltry share in the number of seats.
The Congress wants to contest in 95 assembly seats, giving 14 seats to TDP, eight to the TJS and two to the CPI.
This has caused a lot of disgruntlement among the three allies. But having come to this stage, they cannot walk out of the alliance because at the grassroots level, the message has already gone that they are fighting together.
If they come out of the alliance and contest independently, the people will have no faith in them and there is a possibility of all the parties losing even their winnable seats.
On Saturday, the CPI issued an ultimatum to the Congress party saying it would go it alone, if it is not granted at least five seats. The Congress leaders are trying to pacify them.
“The CPI has to be part of the Mahakootami, since it was part of the Telangana Joint Action Committee for quite long time. The Congress should play the role of big brother and decide the alliances at the earliest. We are already lagging behind in campaign by a month,” TJS president Prof M Kodandaram said.
But, the Congress which is taking its own sweet time in finalizing the list, is of the view that the alliance partners would definitely come down on their knees and agree for whatever it would give it to them.
