Date:01/10/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/10/01/stories/2008100150150100.htm
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CPI(M)-TRS truck ‘to beat’ Congress

— Photo: G. Krishnaswamy

TACTFUL PACT: TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao meets CPI (M) leader B.V. Raghavalu in Hyderabad on Tuesday.

HYDERABAD: Setting aside their conflicting stand on separate statehood, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) have decided to join hands to work for the Congress party’s defeat in the next elections.

CPI (M) State secretary B.V. Raghavulu and TRS president K. Chandrasekhar Rao said on Tuesday that the ideological differences between the two parties would now become secondary in their effort to work against the Congress.

They also resolved to work for unity among the opposition parties in adopting an “anti-Congress stand”.

Mr. Rao took the initiative for forging the friendship by calling on Mr. Raghavulu at his party office, M.B. Bhavan, here on Tuesday afternoon. Their hour-long meeting was considered politically significant in light of efforts by the Opposition to forge a grand alliance to defeat the Congress and the Telugu Desam softening its earlier resistance to separate Telangana. The CPI (M) has already given broad indications of its willingness to align with the TDP.

The CPI is, however, keeping its options on alliances open and is looking at Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam for a possible tie-up. “We want the two Left parties to be together and we are prepared to join hands with them,” Mr. Chandrasekhar Rao told reporters after the meeting.

Mr. Raghavulu said his party’s primary agenda was to defeat the Congress.

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