india

Updated: Feb 05, 2019 18:59 IST

The Congress party has decided to go alone in the upcoming parliamentary elections in Telangana and contest all the 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana after the failure of Maha Kootami (grand alliance) experiment in the recent assembly elections in the state.

Senior leaders of the Pradesh Congress Committee including PCC chief N Uttam Kumar Reddy, working presidents A Revanth Reddy, Ponnam Prabhakar, Mohammad Azharuddin and J Kusuma Kumar, met party president Rahul Gandhi in Delhi on Wednesday to discuss the strategy for the Lok Sabha elections in the state and finalise candidates.

“There will be absolutely no alliance with any other party in so far as parliament elections are concerned. The party has decided to field candidates in all the 17 LS seats in the state,” senior PCC leader Guduru Narayana Reddy said.

He said many party leaders felt that the alliance with other parties, especially the Telugu Desam Party, at the eleventh hour had done more damage to the Congress than good. “The experiment did not work out. So, we have decided to go alone in the parliament elections,” he said.

In the 2018 assembly elections, the Congress won 19 seats in the 119-member house and the TDP won only two.

However, the Congress wants to continue cordial relations with the partners of Maha Kootami and seek their cooperation in the coming elections. “We don’t think our alliance partners, the TDP or Telangana Jana Samithi of the CPI, will contest the Lok Sabha elections, after facing such a massive debacle in the assembly elections. So, we will request them to support the Congress candidates, rather than burning their fingers by fielding their candidates,” Reddy said.

The Telangana unit of TDP, however, reacted cautiously to the Congress suggestion. “Let their high command take a decision on continuing or discontinuing the alliance with us. It is not in the hands of the Telangana PCC but will be decided by Rahul Gandhi and our party president N Chandababu Naidu,” Telangana TDP general secretary and former MP Chandrasekhar Reddy Ravula said.

He said the TDP is not a voluntary organisation to drop out from the contest. “If the Congress decides to contest all the 17 seats, the TDP will also enter the fray. We shall field candidates in constituencies wherever we have chances of victory, if not all,” Ravula said.

Telangana TDP president L Ramana also confirmed that the party would definitely contest the LS elections in the state. “We are yet to start the process of identifying the seats and candidates,” he said.

TJS president M Kodandaram, however, hinted at abstaining from the contest in LS polls. “Though we have not taken a call yet, the mood of the majority in the party is that we shall stay away from contesting the elections and focus on strengthening the party in the next five years. For now, we may have to support the Congress,” he said.