TRS not to participate in Opposition leaders meeting on Presidential candidate

Hyderabad: The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) will not be attending the Opposition parties leaders’ meeting slated to be held in New Delhi with the ostensible purpose of arriving at a joint strategy for the Presidential polls. The decision of the TRS not to attend the meeting was taken after a prolonged meeting of the party […]

Hyderabad: The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) will not be attending the Opposition parties leaders’ meeting slated to be held in New Delhi with the ostensible purpose of arriving at a joint strategy for the Presidential polls.

The decision of the TRS not to attend the meeting was taken after a prolonged meeting of the party leaders headed by the party president and Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao at Pragathi Bhavan here on Tuesday.

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TRS leaders who attended the meeting were stated to have opined that the very convening of the meeting was done in a hurried manner. While it was meant to be a consultative meeting with the Opposition parties, some leaders were contacted by certain party leaders projecting them as the prospective candidates, thereby indicating that it was not going to be a consultative meeting at all.

A majority opinion that emerged out of the meeting was that TRS should not stray away from its stated policy of maintaining equi-distance with the Congress and the BJP. The possibility of the Congress attending the meeting would send wrong signals if the TRS chose to attend the meeting. Moreover, very recently, the AICC leader Rahul Gandhi had made it clear that his party would fight tooth and nail with the TRS. In this backdrop, the TRS should not be attending the meeting, party leaders were learnt to have told Chandrashekhar Rao.

The party leadership was also of the view that it could take a decision on supporting any candidate at a later stage, but right now it was not politically sagacious to attend the Opposition Parties meeting, the meeting felt, according to party sources.

The presidential elections will take place on July 18 and the results will be declared on July 21.