At a joint press conference with his Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar on Wednesday, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao called for “a BJP-mukt Bharat”.
Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, who visited Bihar on Wednesday and met Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his deputy and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav, called for “BJP-mukt Bharat”.
Addressing a press conference after meeting Kumar and Yadav, the Telangana CM, fondly called KCR, blamed the BJP-led dispensation at the Centre for the many ills plaguing the country.
He also attacked the Narendra Modi government over rupee depreciation, farmer protests, unemployment, and rising prices.
Here are the top developments:
1) KCR, who has been open to the idea of a third opposition front to challenge the BJP, met Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his deputy Tejashwi Yadav.
2) The official purpose of KCR’s visit to Patna was to hand over cheques of Rs 10 lakh each to the next of kin of five soldiers from Bihar who died during the clash with Chinese troops at Galwan Valley in June 2020. But the visit came in the backdrop of Nitish Kumar’s split with the NDA and renewed buzz about a united opposition.
3) KCR, in a joint press conference with CM Nitish Kumar and deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav, attacked the Centre on price rise, unemployment, privatisation policies and called for ‘BJP-mukt Bharat’.
4) KCR, who also met RJD supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav in Patna, in response to a question on Nitish Kumar being a potential challenger to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2024, said, “Nitish ji is one of the best and most senior leaders in the country. I am not the one to make a decision. It will be decided when all opposition parties sit together.”
5) Around 50 minutes into the presser, Nitish Kumar got up to leave, seemingly miffed at being posed questions on the joint opposition PM candidate, which KCR had dodged, saying “will be decided on the basis of consensus.”
6) This was KCR’s sixth tour to meet leaders of regional parties. He earlier met JMM Chief Shibu Soren and his son and Jharkhand CM Hemant Soren, the Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray, Tamil Nadu CM and DMK leader MK Stalin, and West Bengal CM and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee.
During his trip to New Delhi and Punjab, he met with Chief Ministers Arvind Kejriwal and Bhagwant Mann.
KCR had also met the Samajwadi Party’s Akhilesh Yadav twice.
7) During the Patna meet, both KCR and Nitish Kumar said the alternative to the BJP will be the main opposition front and not a third front (without the Congress).
“It is not the third front, but the main front to fight the BJP, which is playing the dangerous game of whipping up communal passions for its own petty political gains,” KCR said.
8) Dismissing the KCR-Nitish meeting, BJP Rajya Sabha MP and former Bihar Deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi said, “The KCR-Nitish meeting is nothing more than a comedy show.”
9) During his visit, KCR also handed over cheques of Rs five lakh each to the next of kin of the 12 labourers from the state who died in a fire at a scrap factory in Hyderabad this year.
10) KCR, who referred to Bihar as the land of revolution, ended his tour with a visit to the Takht Harmandir Patna Sahib Gurudwara, which is built on the site where Guru Gobind Singh was born.
