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Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) president K Chandrasekhar Rao on Saturday ruled out any alliance with the Congress in the ensuing elections to the Lok Sabha and Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly.
Rao appeared to have been irked by the comments made by All India Congress Committee general secretary Digvijay Singh at the meet-the-press programme held here on Friday.
Replying to a question, Singh said he was not aware of any TRS legislators wanting to join Congress. He, however, added if any TRS MLA was interested in joining the Congress party, they should contact him or the party's central leadership.
Construing this as an open invitation for the defection of his party MLAs, an angry TRS president on Saturday announced there would be no alliance with the Congress.
"Let us see from tomorrow whether Congress MLAs will come to us (TRS) or our MLAs will approach the Congress," Rao said while addressing his party workers at the Telangana Bhavan. Before the bifurcation Andhra Pradesh, Rao said TRS would be merged with Congress if the ruling party at the Centre accorded separate statehood to the Telangana region.
However, after the bifurcation, Rao ruled out merger of his party with the Congress citing several reasons for going back on his earlier stance.
Now, leave alone merger, the chances of an alliance between the two parties appears very remote with Singh also maintaining that the Congress was preparing to contest all the 17 Lok Sabha and 119 Assembly seats in Telangana.
