Former Minister & ex-Leader of Opposition in Telangana Legislative Council Mohammed Ali Shabbir has strongly condemned Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao for skipping the meeting of all opposition parties held in New Delhi by West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee.
“By skipping the meeting of all opposition parties, KCR has made it clear that his TRS party was a secret ally of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It has been proved now that Congress was not wrong in calling TRS a B-team of BJP,” Shabbir Ali said in a media statement on Wednesday.
Shabbir Ali said that CM KCR first tried to break the Congress-led United Progressive Alliances (UPA) by meeting the heads of various secular parties across the country. However, his attempt to divide the secular parties failed with all parties rejecting KCR’s idea of a third front. Having failed to divide the secular forces, CM KCR, under the direction of BJP’s top leadership, hatched a plan to launch a ‘national party’. He reiterated that CM KCR was a staunch follower of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and he would do anything to help the BJP win the next elections.
The Congress leader said that if KCR was honest in his call for unity among secular parties, then he would’ve attended today’s meeting convened by Mamata Banerjee to discuss the strategy for elections for President and Vice-President of India. He reminded that the TRS party supported BJP’s candidates Ramnath Kovind and Venkaiah Naidu in the last elections. He supported Ramnath Kovind, the candidate with an RSS background, to defeat Meira Kumar, a Dalit leader and daughter of Babu Jagjivan Ram. Similarly, KCR preferred BJP leader Naidu over Gopal Krishna Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi.
“KCR has been acting as an agent of BJP since 2014. He always supported the BJP Govt and backed all its controversial decisions like demonetisation, GST, etc., while TRS MPs voted in favour of the Modi Govt in all controversial Bills including the Triple Talaq Bill. Since the BJP is now fearing the backlash due to unity among secular parties, KCR has been trying hard to divide those parties on the pretext of forming a non-BJP and non-Congress front,” he said.
Shabbir Ali said that CM KCR must realise that there could not be any anti-BJP front without the Congress party. “Congress is still the second-largest party in the country with 53 Lok Sabha and 36 Rajya Sabha MPs. The party and its allies are in power in five major states in the country and except for a few, it is the main opposition in the remaining States. Therefore, only the Congress party has the potential and required strength to defeat BJP at the national level. TRS has just 9 MPs in Lok Sabha and only six members in the Rajya Sabha which is not even comparable with the Congress,” he said.
The Congress leader also praised Mamata Banerjee for not inviting Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen to the meeting of all opposition parties. “Just like TRS, MIM is a secret ally of BJP. MIM President Asaduddin Owaisi has been helping BJP in different States by dividing secular votes. Therefore, MIM and Asaduddin Owaisi should be treated as BJP’s allies and not as opposition,” he said.
