VIJAYAWADA: A day after Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao closeted with DMK chief MK Stalin in Chennai and reportedly invited the latter to be part of his proposed non-BJP and non-Congress Federal Front, party treasurer Durai Murugan on Tuesday met Chief Minister and TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu at the Secretariat in Amaravati .
Murugan is learnt to have briefed Naidu about what transpired between Stalin and KCR and reportedly made it clear that the DMK would sail with the Congress-led alliance in which the TDP is also a partner.
The DMK, considering the bypolls in four Assembly constituencies in Tamil Nadu on May 19, does not want to rock its alliance with the Congress by sending any wrong signal.
The DMK senior leader, who came with his family, was received by TDP Rajya Sabha member CM Ramesh.
Durai refused to speak to the media and left the place. The meeting attains significance at a time when leaders of two regional parties – Chandrababu Naidu of the TDP and Chandrasekhar Rao of TRS – are engaged in a game of one-upmanship to play a key role in national politics.
KCR is trying hard to stitch Federal Front sans the Congress and the BJP at national-level with support of regional parties with an eye on ‘Delhi’, while Naidu, too, is sparing no effort to form a Third Front consisting of the Congress and all non-BJP parties.
It may be recalled here that after a meeting with KCR and BJD chief Naveen Patnaik in December last year with a similar objective, BJD MP Soumya Ranjan Patnaik met Naidu a day after in Amaravati.
The meeting between Naidu and the BJD MP then was to ‘extend support to Naidu over EVM’s’. Incidentally, this time too, just a day after KCR met Stalin, a representative of the DMK rushed to Naidu and held talks. When contacted, senior leaders of the TDP said they were not aware of the details of the meeting as it was ‘one-to-one’.