Hyderabad: KT Rama Rao (KTR), caretaker IT Minister and Telangana Rashtra Samithi leader, said, “Post 2019, Chandrababu Naidu will not enjoy any political clout. He may face defeat in his home state and may not have any MPs with him, making himself inconsequential in politics.” He was having an informal conversation with media reporters in Hyderabad.   

KTR accused the Telugu Desam Party leader N Chandrababu Naidu of using the current elections as a means to place himself as a principal entity in the Third Front. Naidu’s actions while campaigning was a tactic to cover up his failures in Andhra Pradesh of which he is the CM. 

Once the TRS government establishes its governance in Telangana on December 11, the party would take up the issue of Federal Front, in the next three months, he stated. “He (Naidu) is doing nothing new about the Front, he is trying to meet the leaders, including Sonia Gandhi, who is part of the UPA,” KTR said on the formation of alliances of different parties. TRS chief K Chandrashekhar Rao had started the process of meeting with different party leaders and forging the Federal Front prior to this election.        

KTR said that his party will not form an alliance with any other party. “Both (Congress and BJP) have done equal damage to the country. The TRS will not share any dais with the TDP also.” 

Commenting on the pre-poll survey conducted by former MP Lagadapati Rajagopal, the TRS minister said that the survey was fabricated by Lagadapati and Naidu. “Lagadapati had played the same kind of mind game against the YSRCP in 2014 and now they are making a vain attempt to try it out on TRS,” he said. He stated that the survey was highly misleading and accused that it was a mind game of Naidu. 

KTR said that he disagrees to this prediction and said that Lagadapati congratulated him after sharing the details with him on WhatsApp and that he was ready to share screenshots of it.

According to KTR, the survey by Lagadapati was conducted on 23 constituencies and the latter had predicted that TRS would win in 19 seats. However, he also suggested that the TRS would win 65-70 seats. KTR thus is astonished at this conjecture. Speaking to the media persons he said, “As he (Lagadapati) had confirmed to the media, that survey was conducted between October 20 and November 20. He also predicted a victory of some 10 Independents as against two he had projected to me earlier.” 

KTR also suspected Lagadapati’s role in the formation of Praja Kutami and the partnership between Congress and TDP. “He also wanted the TRS to fight the polls in alliance with the TDP in the state, which was turned down. Finally, he brokered an understanding between Congress and the TDP,” KTR said. He also inquired as to why TRS should join hands with TDP. 

Lagadapati had also predicted that the TRS would perform better in the Assembly elections considering the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) polls. KTR questioned the authenticity of Lagadapati’s poll results and said that the different figure given by him only suggests advantages for Congress-led Praja Kutami. KTR felt that it was solely because of common friendships that Lagadapati was forced to bring out such a result that would show Prajapati to be at an advantage.  

KTR also added that TRS had conducted its own pre-poll surveys through agencies, but these were for personal use.