Apparently with an eye on minority votes, TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao on Sundayasserted that his party under no circumstances would support “communal” forces.
Kickstarting his poll campaign in Telangana at a massive public meeting here, KCR said, “I am making a policy statement. TRS will not align with communal forces. It will support the Third Front at the Centre after elections. We are a cent per cent secular party. We will not join the NDA.”
He predicted that the BJP-led NDA would not get even 200 Lok Sabha seats. “Several national leaders, including Mamata Banerjee, Jayalalithaa and Naveen Patnaik, are in touch with me. All of them want a non-BJP, non-Congress formation at the Centre,” he said. Promising 12 per cent quota for Muslims in education and employment, he asserted, “This is KCR’s word. We will provide this quota, come what may.”
He said his party would ensure that the Telangana state would be secular and immediately linked it to the Centre. “If we have a good number of MPs, we will be able to get clearances for our projects,” he said.
KCR’s “policy statement” assumes significance as Muslims form a sizeable chunk of the population in Telangana and Karimnagar Lok Sabha constituency -- here BJP’s Ch Vidyasagara Rao is in the fray with the TDP’s support against B Vinod Kumar of the TRS. KCR’s secular card is also being seen as a strategy to wean away Muslims from the Congress.