Telangnana Rashtra Samithi president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had to face criticism from some quarters over skipping the swearing-in ceremony of Janata Dal (S) leader H D Kumaraswamy as the chief minister of Karnataka at Bengaluru early this week.
The Congress leaders in Telangana alleged that KCR avoided the function as he was afraid of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the wake of reports that the Centre threatened to reopen CBI cases against him.
Though the TRS leaders defended it saying KCR had other official engagements on Wednesday and hence had to go to Bengaluru a day in advance to greet him.
A section of media tried to project that KCR had foregone a golden opportunity of consolidating the regional parties to form a federal front and conceded the advantage to his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N Chandrababu Naidu, who grabbed the initiative on the federal front issue.
But after a couple of days, analysts started understanding the strategy of KCR. They now feel that KCR had done a good thing by skipping the oath-taking ceremony, as he would also have got the stigma of being pro-Congress.
Like Naidu, he would not have avoided shaking hands with the Congress leaders including Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.
Since Naidu had no threat from the Congress in AP, he could take the risk, but it would have been a big political blow to KCR had he rubbed shoulders with the Congress leaders in Bengaluru, as he is fighting the Congress party in Telangana.
“It was definitely a clever move on the part of KCR to skip the Bengaluru visit on Wednesday and he avoided the embarrassment of joining hands with Congress party against which the TRS is fighting in the State,” an analyst said.
Secondly, the people had not given mandate to the Congress party and would not appreciate Kumaraswamy joining hands with it.
So attending the swearing in ceremony is against the wishes of the people. That would in turn have an impact on Telangana elections as well. Hence, KCR did a good thing by skipping the ceremony.
