Telangana Rashtra Samithi president and Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has received yet another setback to his attempts of to form a coalition of regional parties to form a federal front or a people’s front as an alternative to the Congress and the BJP.
Within a day of KCR’s media managers issuing a statement that he is going to meet his Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik, president of Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in the first week of May to discuss the issue of forming the federal front, Patnaik clarified that he had not invited KCR for holding any such discussions.
While the Telangana CMO, in a statement said the meeting between KCR and Patnaik would take place in Bhubaneshwar only in May because of the Odisha assembly currently being in session, Patnaik said KCR himself wanted to meet him.
“He said he was going to Puri to visit Jagannath temple and on his way, he would like to meet me. I said okay,” Patnaik told media in Bhubaneshwar.
The Odisha CM clarified that KCR did not talk about a proposal discussion on the third front.
“He did not raise any political issue. In any case, I am not in favour of a third front or fourth front,” he said.
During his Kolkata visit, too, the Telangana CMO issued the same statement that he was going there to talk to West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata to discuss the third front issue.
However, later it was revealed that KCR had gone to Kolkata only to pay obeisance to Kali Maa and the discussion with Mamata was only a secondary issue.
Moreover, Mamata had told him that no front would be possible without involving the Congress.
On her part, Banerjee had held consultations with NCP leader Sharad Pawar and Sanjay Raut, a Rajya Sabha MP of the BJP's estranged ally Shiv Sena, to discuss ways to forge an anti-BJP front at the national level.
