People's Democracy

ANDHRA PRADESH

To Defeat Congress, Four Parties Join Hands

M Venugopala Rao

A formidable combination of political forces to defeat the Congress party in the coming elections in Andhra Pradesh has emerged, with the Telugu Desam Party, Telangana Rashtra Samithi, the CPI(M) and the CPI coming together for a united fight. They officially announced the decision of going in for seat adjustments. They discussed the issues of Satyam scandal, about the government�s projects to Maytas and the latest political developments. TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu, state secretaries of the CPI(M) and the CPI, B V Raghavulu and K Narayana, deputy general secretary of the CPI S Sudhakar Reddy, TRS president K Chandrasekhar Rao and other leaders of the four parties - Y Venkateswara Rao and S Veeraiah, state secretariat members of the CPI(M), Ch Venkata Reddy and K Ramakrishna, state secretariat members of the CPI, and TRS MLA T Harish Rao - participated in the meeting held at the residence of Chandrababu Naidu in Hyderabad. Chandrasekhar Rao announced that TRS would sail with the TDP and the Left parties and that the Congress party would be buried fathom deep in the coming elections.

After the TDP and TRS had come to an understanding on electoral adjustment, both Chandrababu Naidu and Chandrasekhar Rao announced that with the sole aim of defeating the Congress party, they would go to the people with a common manifesto. They announced that a massive meeting would be organised by the TDP, TRS, the CPI(M) and the CPI to explain their stand to the people. Both the leaders made it clear that seat adjustment would be finalised after coming to an understanding on the winnability of the candidates in the coming elections.

For singing dirge to the autocratic rule of the Y S Rajasekhara Reddy government in the state, the coming together of the four parties had become a historical necessity, they said. They also announced that Majlis Bachao Tehrik, too, would join hands with the four parties. Chandrababu was confident that in the coming elections the victory of the four parties and defeat of the Congress party would be certain. Chandrasekhar Rao asserted that the four parties would certainly win more than 200 seats in the state whose legislative assembly has a strength of 294 seats.