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Left parties look up to Congress for alliance in Telangana polls
CPI state secretary K Sambasiva Rao said there were preliminary round of talks with the mediators from the Congress.
After being dumped by the ruling Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), the two Left parties – Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) are looking up to the Congress for an alliance in the upcoming assembly elections in Telangana, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.
A delegation of the CPI leaders, comprising party secretary in Telangana K Sambasiva Rao and senior leaders Chada Venkat Reddy and Challa Venkat Reddy, held preliminary rounds of discussions with a few representatives of the Telangana Congress on Sunday on the possible alliance between the two parties, the people quoted above said.
In-charge of All India Congress Committee (AICC) Telangana unit, Manikrao Thakre, confirmed to reporters on Monday that talks were conducted with the CPI leaders, but they were purely informal and there is no understanding yet on the alliances or sharing of seat.
“No official talks were held with the CPI leaders. The high command has left it to Pradesh Congress Committee president A Revanth Reddy and Congress Legislature Party leader Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka to hold talks with the Left parties,” he said, adding that the high command would take the final call in this regard.
CPI state secretary K Sambasiva Rao, too, said there were preliminary round of talks with the mediators from the Congress. “We’ve put forth certain proposals before the Congress and only if it agrees for the same, there would be further talks,” he said, adding that his party was prepared to work with any like-minded party to defeat the BRS.
CPI-M state secretary Tammineni Sitaram told reporters that his party was not in a hurry to forge any alliance with the Congress. “We shall take a call only if there is a concrete proposal from the Congress and after discussing with the CPI,” he said.
A Congress leader privy to the talks said the CPI was asking for five assembly seats – Munugode, Wyra, Kothagudem, Bellampalli and Husnabad. Though there was no proposal from the CPI-M, it might insist on Bhadrachalam, Palair, Madhira, Miryalguda and Ibrahimpatnam seats.
“If there is an alliance, the Congress might offer a maximum of two seats to the CPI and one to the CPI-M,” the Congress leader quoted above said.
The CPI, in the 2018 assembly elections, had an alliance with the Congress as part of a grand alliance comprising the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS) and contested in three seats, but lost all of them. While the CPI-M contested independently in 26 seats but drew blank everywhere.
Subsequently, both the Left parties came closer to the BRS after its president and chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) took up an aggressive posture against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). During the Munugode by-elections in Left-dominated Nalgonda district, held in November 2022, the parties extended support to the BRS, which won the seat with a margin of around 10,000 votes.
KCR, who thanked the Left parties, announced later that the alliance would continue even in the December 2023 assembly elections, but on August 21, when he announced the list of 115 candidates for 119-member assembly, he declared that not a single seat would be given to the Left parties as they had joined the opposition alliance INDIA at the national level.
Sambasiva Rao said it was unfortunate that KCR chose to dump the Communists after winning the Munugode seat. “We shall go all out to defeat the BRS in the next elections,” he declared.
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