The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : TRS, Telugu Desam deny secret understanding

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Thursday, May 01, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

TRS, Telugu Desam deny secret understanding

Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD: Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) and the Telugu Desam Party have separately denied a report in a Telugu daily that they had entered into a secret understanding for the byelections. Both of them said they were seeking legal advice to proceed against the daily.

Addressing a press conference, TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao alleged that the Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy was using the newspaper to run a campaign and water down the separate Telangana movement. Denying that he had a telephonic conversation with TDP president N. Chandrababu Naidu to cobble up an alliance, he said there was no need for a secret understanding. He had himself stated in the past that the TRS was prepared to forge an alliance with TDP if the latter supported separate Telangana. He had also said as much at the TRS foundation day public meeting on Sunday.

‘No need for tie-up’

TDP spokesman Tammineni Seetharam stated separately that the TDP had its own political ideology and there was no need for it to forge alliances secretly. It would do it openly like it did with the CPI (M).

It was strange that the daily should come up with such a report when Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao was alleging a secret Congress-TDP alliance to defeat his party. He made it clear that the TDP would fight both the Congress and TRS.

Meanwhile, the Congress Legislature Party has criticised the CPI(M)’s tie-up with the TDP as sheer political opportunism. “The CPI (M) will pay a heavy price for its mistake in joining hands with the TDP, which it had opposed tooth and nail in the last elections,” the CLP said in a statement issued here on Wednesday. It demanded that the Left party to explain the reasons for aligning with the TDP after opposing it in the 2004 elections.

Claiming that people would teach a fitting lesson to the CPI (M) for adopting ‘double standards’, the CLP recalled that the Left party had launched an agitation against the then TDP Government following people’s anger.

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