One of the things being hotly debated in Telangana is whether partners in the Congress-led alliance, which collectively had more vote share than the TRS in the last poll, would succeed in vote transfer among them.
The ruling TRS (Telangana Rashtra Samiti) had 34.3 per cent vote share in the 2014 elections, while the Congress and the TDP recorded 25.2 and 14.7 per cent, respectively. TDP had an alliance with the BJP last time around.
The Amit Shah-led party is going alone in the December seven elections to the 119-member Assembly, as also the TRS.
The Congress, the TDP, the Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS) and the Communist Party of India (CPI) have forged "Prajakutami" (People's Alliance) to take on the TRS.
The AICC In-charge of Telangana, R C Khuntia, said it's the "compulsion" that brought the parties of the alliance together and he expects the grouping to work with cohesion to put it across the TRS.
"People are very unhappy with the way TRS and KCR (as caretaker Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao is popularly known) handled the state.. they just want to throw him (KCR) out," Khuntia told PTI.
Referring to the vote share of the Congress and the TDP in the last elections, senior TDP politburo member Ravula Chandrasekhar Reddy said with the CPI and TJS on board, the alliance was "very strong."
According to Reddy, the vote transfer among the partners would definitely happen as it's "inevitable". It's the "misrule, highhandedness and authoritarianism" of KCR that brought the parties together to fight the TRS, he claimed.
"The creator of this grand alliance is nobody. It's only KCR. By virtue of his authoritarianism, we are forced to come together and join hands," he said.
But some TRS leaders said the TDP has become a heavily depleted party in Telangana, where 13 MLAs deserted the party with 12 joining the TRS and one to the Congress. However, Reddy exuded confidence that the TDP would win in the 13 seats it's contesting.
"(Some) leaders have deserted the TDP but the party is intact and cadre is intact," he said. The CPI General Secretary Suravaram Sudhakar Reddy said, "I think the alliance will work. We are hopeful we will get the majority".
TRS leader K T Rama Rao, considered number two in his party, dubbed the Congress-led grouping as an "opportunistic alliance based on a bundle of contradictions."
"This arithmetic, the calculation will not work, and the people will reject (the alliance) outright," Rama Rao told PTI.
Sudhakar Reddy dismissed Rama Rao's contention as "normal pre-election rhetoric."
"He (TRS) himself was in alliance with TDP and Congress (in the past). And now, he (TRS) is contesting alone, (so) he says all others are opportunists. There is no substance in this type of comments," Reddy said.
