For the last few days, there has been a talk in the political circles and also in the national and local media that the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi in Telangana led by chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao is cosying up with the Bharatiya Janata Party.
KCR, who had been aggressively attacking the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi at every meeting, has surprisingly has gone silent. At the same time, his son K T Rama Rao, who had hardly gone to New Delhi in the last few years to meet the Central ministers, also had done it.
The replacement of Bandi Sanjay, a die-hard critic of KCR, with a soft-spoken leader like G Kishan Reddy as the Telangana BJP chief has further strengthened the rumours that there is an understanding between the BJP and the BRS.
Amidst these rumours, the Prime Minister is coming to Warangal on July 8 to lay the foundation stone for several crucial infrastructure development projects in Telangana worth around Rs 6,100 crore.
They include national highway projects worth over Rs 5,550 crore and work to upgrade the 68-km-long Karimnagar--Warangal section of NH-563 from existing two lanes to a four-lane configuration. Modi will also lay the foundation stone of the railway manufacturing unit in Kazipet.
The question now is whether KCR will receive Modi at the airport and attend the latter’s official programmes in Warangal.
According to reports, the Prime Minister’s Office has sent an invitation to the chief minister’s office, asking KCR to attend the official events of Modi.
However, there has been no response from the CMO to the invitation. There is a complete silence from the BRS on this front, though the talk is that in the wake of the talk of a bonhomie with the BJP, KCR might as well attend the PM’s programmes, unless he decides against it at the last moment.
There is also a curiosity as to what Modi would talk at the BJP public meeting after the official events. If the BJP wants to go soft on KCR, he may not make any hard-hitting speech at Warangal attacking the BRS, but would confine himself to highlighting his government’s achievements at the Centre in the last nine years.
