Bharatiya Janata Party which has forged an alliance with the Jana Sena Party headed by power star Pawan Kalyan in the Telugu states, seems to be completely ignoring its alliance partner.
The BJP forced Pawan Kalyan to drop out from the contest in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation elections on the pretext of coalition dharma.
The BJP leaders told Pawan that if Jana Sena contested the GHMC polls, it would split the anti-establishment votes and benefit the Telangana Rashtra Samithi.
Apparently, the BJP leadership promised to consider Pawan’s request for allocating Tirupati parliamentary seat, for which by-elections would be held soon. But there was no word from the BJP after it put up an excellent show in the GHMC polls.
The Jana Sena chief went to New Delhi in a mood of desperation and after two days of waiting, he got the appointment with national BJP president J P Nadda.
Though the latter did not give any assurance to Pawan on Tirupati seat, he said a committee would be appointed to identify the right candidate.
However, the BJP now completely dashed off Pawan’s hopes on Tirupati seat.
The state executive committee meeting of the BJP held at Tirupati reportedly discussed the strategy to be adopted by the party in the by-elections to Tirupati LS seat.
“We are planning to field our candidate in the Tirupati by-elections. Though Pawan Kalyan too wants the seat to be allocated to his party, majority of our party leaders wish that the BJP contests the by-polls,” BJP state vice-president P Vishnuvardhan Reddy said after the meeting.
It is definitely a setback for Pawan. It remains to be seen what he will do to sustain the alliance in the coming days.