Eyeing 2024 Lok Sabha polls, Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao will meet his Bihar counterpart Nitish Kumar in Patna on Wednesday to explore the possibility of forming a non-BJP coalition of like-minded parties to defeat the Narendra Modi-led NDA in the upcoming general elections. According to reports, Rao, who is also popularly known as ‘KCR’, is scheduled to arrive in Patna today morning and later distribute cheques of ex-gratia to family members of a dozen labourers who were burnt alive in their sleep at Hyderabad where they lived in a cramped upper storey of a congested building.
KCR, who heads the Telangana Rashtra Samiti, is also tipped to play the nationalism card as he will be paying cheques of compensation to family members of soldiers who were killed in the stand-off with Chinese troops in the Galwan Valley of Ladakh region.
Thereafter, the Telangana chief minister is expected to have a luncheon with Nitish Kumar, whose stock in the anti-BJP camp has sky-rocketed since his path-breaking exit from the NDA earlier this month. “It will be a unity between the south and the north for defeating the BJP,” said Neeraj Kumar, an MLC and chief spokesperson of JD(U), the party to which the Bihar chief minister belongs.
“KCR is undoubtedly a prominent leader of the south and a key voice against the BJP. In Nitish Kumar, the opposition is seeing new hope. The meeting between the two leaders is bound to have national repercussions,” he said.
RJD national vice president Shivanand Tiwary, whose party has seamlessly evolved from a staunch opponent to an ardent ally of the chief minister, concurred with the JD(U) leader’s views. “The meeting between KCR and Nitish is definitely important. Both leaders have a very important role to play in forging opposition unity. The exit of Nitish from NDA has been the biggest setback to the BJP in recent times,” he said.