HYDERABAD: An outwardly confidentlooking Congress is not contemplating any confinement camps for its candidates to protect them from poaching.
The Gandhi Bhavan, its State headquarters, looks quiet without any hustle and bustle as the rank and file has turned it focus on the counting exercise.
According to party sources, Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy had predicted 187 Assembly seats for the Congress. The assessment was based on a feedback he got from the districts.
As such, unlike Opposition parties like the TRS, there was no need for the Congress to indulge in `camp politics’. Only those political parties which feel insecure and do not trust their own candidates or partymen would resort to such practices (camp politics), the sources say.
Yet, anxiety is palpable on the faces of some leaders of the party, who include PCC members, following publication of the findings of exit poll surveys which predicted a hung Assembly in the State and a hung Lok Sabha at the Centre. State Congress chief D Srinivas, too, seems worried about his winning chances in the Nizamabad Urban Assembly constituency.
Some PCC members are sceptical about the party’s performance in the Telangana region. They predict that the tally of the Congress would not cross the two-digit mark in Adilabad, Karimnagar, Nizamabad and Warangal districts. On the other hand, the chief minister predicts a good performance by the Congress in all the three regions of the State. Leaders close to him are upbeat that the party would bounce back to power by securing an absolute majority.
As regards the national scene, Reddy’s aides brush aside TRS leader K Chandrasekhar Rao’s claim that the BJP-led NDA would acquire a strength of 300 in a 543-member Lok Sabha. It is Rao’s wishful thinking and all `secular’ forces at the Centre would extend support to the Congress-led UPA in formation of the next government and thwart BJP’s attempts at wresting power, they say.
It is learnt that some groups in the Congress, including one belonging to the chief minister and others led by D Srinivas and CWC member K Keshava Rao were on the job of contacting leaders of other parties, Praja Rajyam and Telangana Rashtra Samithi in particular, to muster support in the event of the Congress not getting a simple majority.