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A formal announcement on the pre-poll alliance between the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is still a couple of days away, not because of any strong disagreement over seat-sharing but due to municipal elections and other strategic reasons, said people in the know .
BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar, who is camping in the city for talks with TDP leaders, refused to make any comments on the negotiations on Friday while stating that the party’s election committee was going to meet later in the day for this purpose. Some news reports said Javadekar had asked the TDP leadership to close the deal by Friday at any cost.
As municipal elections are being held on March 30 in both the regions, any disclosure of seat-sharing arrangement prior to polling may encourage those who are unlikely to get tickets to play a spoilsport, said TDP leaders.
“The BJP leadership is pushing for an early announcement but we need to consider other factors as well,” said senior TDP leader Kambhampati Rama Mohan Rao.The announcement is likely anytime after March 30, according to him.
Sources said both the parties were flexible towards each other’s position on matters such as number of seats. For instance, the BJP was agreeable to confine to a few seats in Seemandhra while the TDP was willing to share more number of seats in Telangana.
The BJP had asked for 45 Assembly and 9 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana and 5 Lok Sabha and 25 Assembly seats in Seemandhra. It is expected to settle down for a lower number seats, particularly in the Seemandhra Assembly segments.
“The TDP leadership has put forward winnability as a basic criteria in allocation of seats. The BJP was reminded of a previous experience where the TRS won only 10 out of 40 seats given to it in the 2009 elections,” a person close to the TDP leadership told Business Standard.
But compared to just 24 out of the 294 Assembly seats given to the BJP in the 2004 elections, the TDP leadership is going to concede a much larger number of seats to the party this time.
The TDP leadership is also closely watching the electoral strategies of the Congress in the Telangana region. Though both the Congress and the TRS have said they would fight the elections separately, contrary signals have started emerging for the last couple of days as if the earlier posturing was simply a ploy to keep their rivals guessing. It is rumoured that TRS president K Chandrasekhara Rao is likely send his son KT Rama Rao to Delhi to meet the Congress leadership over the alliance.
If the Congress and the TRS strike a pre-poll alliance, the TDP-BJP duo may have to rework the seat sharing exercise as several ticket aspirants may switch loyalties. Meanwhile, Javadekar today met TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu on poll-pact hinting the formalisation of electoral alliance was only a matter of days. A BJP spokesman said Javadekar alone would represent the party central leadership in the joint announcement of the pre-poll alliance as senior leader Arun Jaitley, who was expected to be present during the announcement, was unlikely to make it.
Elections in Telangana and Seemandhra are being held on April 30 and May 7 respectively.
The election notification is expected to be out in the first week of April, leaving a short window for the potential candidates because of the delay in electoral pacts in both the political camps in the state.
