The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : ‘Multi-party contests will benefit Congress’

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Friday, Apr 10, 2009
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

‘Multi-party contests will benefit Congress’

HYDERABAD: State BJP president Bandaru Dattatreya expressed concern that the presence of several parties in the fray was likely to benefit the ruling Congress.

Emergence of new parties, no doubt, signalled an end to the ‘monopoly’ of the two major parties, Congress and TDP. However, the absence of unity among the opposition parties and putting up of candidates by several parties that were not capable of winning the required majority on their own would ‘indirectly’ help the Congress by splitting votes, he said.

Participating in a Meet-The-Press programme organised by the AP Union of Working Journalists here on Thursday, he recalled that TDP founder N.T. Rama Rao worked for uniting the opposition to defeat the Congress, but parties were fighting on their independent agenda that would not help them win.

Though the leaders of all the parties were aware of this reality, nobody was willing to reveal this openly.

He dismissed the claims of the Grand Alliance partners on forming the government, stating that transfer of votes among the partners was not an easy task.

Though the leaders of the parties were putting up a united front, persistence of sharp differences among leaders and workers at the grassroot level would affect the chances of the Grand Alliance parties, he said.

He described as a “big joke” the claim of the alliance partners that formation of separate Telangana was possible only through their victory.

Mr. Dattatreya evaded replies when asked why the BJP was not making a concrete announcement on the women’s reservation Bill.

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