HYDERABAD: While the ruling TRS has already announced its candidates and zooming ahead in campaigning, Opposition parties are clearly lagging behind as they are yet to finalise the contestants.
As Congress, TDP, CPI and TJS are teaming up to come up with a formidable alliance for fighting against the ruling TRS, unless the nitty-gritty of the alliance is worked out, these parties cannot announce their contestants, thus leading to delay.
Even BJP, which has been stressing to go it alone, also did not make any progress in candidates selection and election campaign. The saffron party is expecting dissidents from other parties to defect into its fold.
The party leaders are optimistic that leaders like Babu Mohan, who recently defected to BJP after the TRS sidelined him, will consider BJP for their political outing in the coming elections thus leading to delay in announcement of candidates. The BJP, however, unlike the Congress, has initiated its campaign with party president Amit Shah in Mahbubnagar.
Bahujan Left Front (BLF) led by CPM also has not announced candidates till now and yet to make a mark in election canvassing. Incidentally, MIM, which is on friendly terms with TRS, alike the ruling party, has already announced contestants and reaching out to voters.
“Our main aim is to come up with a common minimum programme (CMP) reflecting the aspirations of all sections of Telangana and present ourselves as a credible alternative to KCR, who has betrayed people with his autocratic rule. Therefore most of our energies were focused on the common manifesto and CMP, thus leading to a delay in the finalisation of seats sharing and contestants. However, we have not lagged behind in campaigning.
As our alliance is getting the good response from people, we do not want to rush and fritter it. Only after thorough exercise contestants will be announced,” L Ramana, president of Telangana TDP unit told Express. However another important partner in the alliance CPI is not as composed as TDP over the delay in seat sharing and finalisation of candidates, as it sees, further delay can harm the prospects of the alliance.