What was Akhilesh-KCR meeting all about? Speculations run rife in Telangana

Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav’s meeting with Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) president and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR) on Monday (July 3) in Hyderabad has become a topic for intense speculations in political circles of the state.

Did KCR invited him to Hyderabad to ‘wrangle’ an invitation for the next meeting of Opposition parties scheduled in Bengaluru in mid-July? Did Akhilesh want to persuade KCR to join the Opposition’s fight against the BJP? Does KCR want to show he is not isolated and alienated, and still has friends in the Opposition camp? Is KCR using the image of Akhilesh, who is talking of PDA (Pichde, Dalit and Alpasankhyak), to reassure minorities of the state that he was not BJP’s B team? And, was it KCR’s attempt to wean away Akhilesh, who has some uncomfortable relationship with Congress, from the Opposition camp?

These are just some of the questions the rendezvous between the two leaders has thrown up.

Rahul’s ‘revelation’

Akhilesh arrived in Hyderabad by a special flight, reportedly at the invitation of the BRS chief, barely 24 hours after Rahul Gandhi revealed that it was at the insistence of the Congress that the BRS was not invited to the meeting of Opposition parties in Patna.

Also Read: Telangana: BRS, BJP hit back at Rahul for his ‘BJP’s B team’ remark

Rahul visited Khammam city, a stronghold of the Congress party, on Sunday (July 2) to address a public meeting organised to mark the end of 109-day padayatra of Congress Legislature Party leader Bhatti Vikramarka and joining of an influential former BRS MP Ponguleti Srinivas Reddy.

KCR hosted a luncheon meeting with Akhilesh which went on till 5.30 pm before the SP boss left for Lucknow. The meeting took place in the backdrop of Rahul’s scathing attack on the BRS, saying that the BRS was unwelcome to the Patna meeting as it had been working like a B team of the BJP. He even dubbed the BRS as the “BJP Rishtedar Samiti”.

Rahul’s comment has attracted huge publicity in the state for quite some time. From NCP chief Sharad Pawar to Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Rout, this opprobrium is periodically hurled at KCR ever since the Enforcement Directorate (ED) developed cold feet to arrest his daughter Kavitha in the Delhi excise scam.

Lonely in Opposition

Despite KCR’s anti-BJP rhetoric, he is not taken seriously by any anti-BJP party in the country. In a way, he looks quite isolated and alienated since no mainstream party is ready to sail with the BRS, though KCR states that his party was meant to drive Prime Minister Narendra Modi out of Delhi.

But the Congress seems to have been irked by Akhilesh’s overture of friendship to KCR. The party looks confused how a leader like Akhilesh’s stature could afford to meet KCR amid the criticism that the latter was helping the BJP indirectly. But Congress doesn’t want to rub the SP leader the wrong way.

Congress leaders chose to ignore the meeting. When asked, they said that it was a meeting of no consequence. “It’s purely a personal level meeting. It has nothing to do with politics,” quipped Mallu Ravi, senior vice president, Telangana Congress. The BJP also has no comments to offer on the development.

But observers have a different interpretation.  PL Visweswara Rao, a noted commentator and former journalism professor from Osmania University, sees KCR’s sense of insecurity behind the meeting. “KCR is isolated and alienated from mainstream parties. Not a single mainstream party is backing him. He is in the grip of insecurity. He neither can join the NDA after his loud talk against PM Modi nor could he take initiative like Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in forging an anti-BJP front,” Rao said.

KCR wants to prove that he is not isolated and he too has friends in the Opposition.

Varied agenda

“So, super-rich KCR chose a young leader like Akhilesh to fly to Hyderabad by arranging a special plane for a luncheon meeting,” Rao said. Talking to The Federal, he opined that Akhilesh, whose agenda is different from that of KCR, would never align with KCR.

Also Read: Rahul in Telangana: Congress won’t join any Opposition bloc having BJP’s ‘B-team’ BRS

On the other hand, noted economist and political commentator Pentapati Pullarao says that Muslim minorities are the target of KCR–Akhilesh meeting. “The accusation that the BRS is the B team of the BJP is sticking. Sensitive minorities are likely to be influenced by it. KCR seems to be under the impression that by frequently interacting with leaders like Akhilesh Yadav and Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal he could dispel the suspicion among the Muslims,” Pullarao told The Federal.

However, the meeting has not gone down well with Telangana SP leaders, who are finding it difficult to defend it. They want the SP to extend support to the Congress to prevent the rise of the BJP in Telangana. For them, the saffron party is a bigger enemy, and they argue that there is nothing wrong with joining hands with the Congress to defeat it.

“Any attempt to weaken the anti-BJP front would also negatively impact the consolidation of PDA, a formula Akhilesh is propagating of late. It is not good for the SP to convey such an impression to the PDA,” SP sources said.