What matters to the country today is the creation of employment, wealth for farmers, irrigation, and rural livelihood. These are things that matter, not hijab or halal and ‘bakwas’ around religion, said KT Rama Rao
New Delhi: Days after a mega conclave of opposition parties, Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) Working President KT Rama Rao on Sunday said their fight against the BJP in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections should be based on ‘principal issues’ before the country, but unfortunately they seem to be ‘obsessed’ with ‘dislodging someone’ from power.
Stating that the BRS would never compromise on the issue of core welfare principles for the country, he asserted that it would form an alliance only with political parties with which it saw a common agenda for the benefit of the people.
“The fight (against the BJP) should be on principal issues before the country. Unfortunately, we are losing the plot there. We seem to be obsessed and worried about dislodging someone or putting somebody there and that should not be the agenda. The agenda should be how the basic priorities of the country have to be met,” he told PTI in an interview.
“You should not be uniting against somebody. You should be uniting for something. What is that something, nobody is able to figure out,” he said when asked to comment on the meeting of 17 opposition parties held in Patna on Friday in a bid to forge unity to take on the BJP in the 2024 elections.
Rama Rao also indicated that the BRS was willing to contest the 2024 Lok Sabha elections on its own and try to make an impactful beginning aiming to win a sizeable number of seats. He also reiterated that any united front, with the Congress or the BJP being its fulcrum, would not succeed as these national parties have been a ‘disaster’ for the country.
He made it clear that political parties should align on a principle welfare agenda that matters to the country.
“What matters to the country today is the creation of employment, wealth for farmers, irrigation, and rural livelihood. These are things that matter, not hijab or halal and ‘bakwas’ around religion,” he said, adding that the BRS was opposed to parties that have hindered development of India.
“Those two principal parties are the BJP and Congress. The Congress governed for 50 years and the BJP for 15 years. Had both worked properly, this situation would not have arisen,” he said, stating that both the Congress and BJP were responsible for the country lagging behind and not progressing as much as it should have in the last 75 years.
“On the other hand, Telangana, despite being a new State, has progressed on welfare fronts in a short span of time,” he said.
On the participation of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal in the Patna meeting, Rama Rao said: “You have to understand they have their own agendas and set of priorities and own vision for the country. I cannot find fault with Kejriwal or Banerjee for attending the meeting. I don’t think we should,” he said.
“These leaders want good for the country and if they believe in a certain path, they are free to pursue it,” he said, adding that “We believe otherwise, we should be left to pursue our own method of growing.”
To a question on efforts by the BRS to cobble an alliance of regional parties, Rao said: “We are not in that mindset. We want to spread our wings. Our party wants to grow at the national stage and where is the question of fighting together or fighting against?”
On the BRS efforts to form a ‘non-Congress and non-BJP front’, he said: “Rome was not built in a day. Even BJP today is a big force and nobody can deny that. They have 300 plus Lok Sabha seats. Remember they also started with two MPs. Therefore, do not discount us. Even a thousand mile journey starts with a single step.”
“We are not going anywhere. We are gearing up towards 2024 (General Elections). We will see how much ground we can cover till 2024 and there is life beyond 2024 as well. Our life does not start and end with the 2024 parliamentary elections,” he said.
On why people should support the BRS, which started as a regional party, he said: “We have been registered as a national party. Hopefully, we get that recognition from the media as well. We have taken a baby step and done whatever we could in Telangana. We believe we come back handsomely in Telangana.”
The party has enough scope to grow at the national level as it aims to replicate the Telangana Model of Development across the country, he added.
“If you ask me if we will get a magic number of 272 numbers in the 2024 general polls. I would say ‘no’. But I would definitely want to say ‘yes’ as there is definitely a possibility to win a sizeable number of Parliament seats and we might become important in the scheme of things in Delhi and elsewhere.” The BRS (then TRS) bagged 9 of the 17 seats at stake in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Sharing the roadmap for the expansion of the BRS, Rao said Party President K Chandrashekhar Rao had conducted four public meetings in Maharashtra and all of them were successful.
“We are spreading our wings. We are waiting for the Zilla Parishad elections,” he said, adding that the BRS wanted to emerge on its own and spread wings in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha.
On reports suggesting that the BRS was going soft on the BJP, especially recent meetings with union ministers, Rama Rao said he had met the same ministers several times, but people’s memory was short.
“We don’t oppose for the sake of opposition. We are in the State and they are the government at the Centre. The government-to-government relationships have to be maintained at some point and at some level. We are trying our best. If they deliver, we will thank them,” he said.