Like Telangana Rashtra Samithi, the Bharatiya Janata Party is also waging a lone battle in Telangana.
The other opposition parties including the Congress, Telugu Desam Party, Telangana Jana Samithi and Communist Party of India (CPI) have come together to form a Maha Kootami and the CPI (M) joined hands with other like-minded parties to form Bahujan Left Front.
While the TRS has already finalized its candidates and is struggling to tackle with the rebel trouble, the BJP is faced with a piquant situation – it does not have enough candidates having potential to win.
The party has so far released two lists of candidates for 66 seats, hoping that more potential candidates would join the party to fight the remaining seats.
However, on Thursday, the BJP got an unexpected pleasant surprise. Yuva Telangana Party floated by popular leader Jitta Balakrishna Reddy has come forward to forge an alliance with the BJP for the ensuing elections.
Reddy, along with his party colleague and former television anchor Rani Rudrama Devi, met Secunderabad MP and senior BJP leader Bandaru Dattatreya to discuss the alliance issue.
Dattatreya, who consulted the party bosses, readily accepted the alliance offer. Reddy submitted a list of candidates ready to fight the elections, but the BJP said it could allocate 10 seats to Yuva Telangana Party.
Some of the seats represented by Reddy were already proposed to be contested by the BJP which released the names.
So, Dattatreya said the BJP was ready to allocate the seats for which it was yet to announce the candidates. The deal was struck and the alliance was formalized.
Thus, yet another Kootami of BJP-YTP will fight the elections in Telangana!