Mahakutami: TDP firm, TJS softens

​Hyderabad: Telugu Desam Telangana unit on Thursday held an emergency meeting and reviewed the status of seat-sharing between other Mahakutami partners comprising Congress, CPI and Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS). The party decided to stick to its demand to the allotment of not less than 25 seats to the party. 

Telangana TDP president L Ramana told his partymen that the standoff on seat-sharing between all Mahakutami partners will not be resolved until the main partner, Congress, met the demands of other Mahakutami partners in the finalisation of seats. “The party will not compromise on the number of seats to be given to the TDP,” a senior leader said, adding that the list of the Assembly segments where TDP was considered a strong political force was already submitted to the Congress. “The Congress leadership will have to take the final call,” he added. 

Most of the prospective TDP candidates already launched poll campaign in their segments and waiting for the Mahakutami’s nod. If the Congress did not accept the demand to allot seats to the TDP in the identified segments, the candidates will not hesitate to contest as rebels. To avoid such a trouble, the TD leaders felt the Congress should take the initiative and resolve the seat-sharing within no time since the time for intensified poll campaign was fast approaching.      

The TDP leaders will also hold another meeting with the potential candidates and decide the plan of action in case they are not given opportunity to fight as Mahakutami candidate in the elections. Meanwhile, as the Telangana Congress reached out and conveyed that they are expediting seats sharing issue in a couple of days, Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS) softened its stand on Grand Alliance. TJS chief Prof Kodandaram felt that “give and take” method should be adopted so that all stakeholder parties are happy with number of seats allotted.

Addressing media, he said that party functionaries are in a state of confusion and not knowing what to do as there was no clarity on constituencies still. He felt no concrete efforts were made in the last few weeks to finalise seats issue. Except for meeting over tea, the alliance meetings have not arrived at an understanding on this,
Kodandaram said.

He, however, said that there was no confusion over martyrs’ agenda mechanism comprising alliance parties and intellectuals. The Congress, the TDP, the CPI and the TJS are all for it, he said. The TJS president said that seats sharing issue should be resolved at the earliest in the best interest of all parties. He said that being a new party, people doubt about winning ability of the TJS candidates and financial strength to contestelections.

“We tried to say that financial issues alone do not matter. What are important is party presence, activities, candidate popularity, and social composition of voters, financial strength and opponent prospects (whether he is strong or weak). All these factors influence the final outcome. The Congress top brass was told about this analysis and they also agreed,” he said.