No takers for federal front pitch of TRS, says BJP

Hyderabad: The BJP on Wednesday dismissed the Telangana Rashtra Samiti's pitch to forge a federal front of regional parties, saying the initiative is a non-starer and there are no takers for it. "This federal front is a complete non-starter. It has not gone beyond Telugu states (of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh)", the BJP national spokesperson G V L Narasimha Rao told PTI. "There are no takers for it."

In the past several months, TRS President and Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had been making efforts to prop up a non-BJP, non-Congress federal front of regional parties. But TRS leaders have said in recent times that they expect the proposed front to take "good shape" after the Lok Sabha elections.

TRS leader and Nizamabad Lok Sabha member, K Kavitha, daughter of the Chief Minister, said earlier this month she expected parties not aligned with the Congress and the BJP to bag 120-plus seats in the April-May elections. "It's a very desperate attempt to show that we (TRS) are relevant," Narasimha Rao said, claiming that except the YSRCP, the Chief Minister cannot count on support from any other party for his federal front initiative. "It's nothing but an attempt to deceive the electorate but then the people are far too smarter to really fall for this kind of efforts", Rao, who was here as part of campaigning for BJP candidates in Telangana, said.