It is now official. The Congress party announced on Wednesday that it will not have any alliance with the Telugu Desam Party in the forthcoming assembly and Lok Sabha elections in Andhra Pradesh.
A decision to this effect was conveyed to Andhra Pradesh Congress Committee by AICC in-charge of Andhra affairs Oomen Chandy.
“We shall go it alone in the upcoming elections and contest all the 175 assembly and 25 Lok Sabha seats in Andhra Pradesh. We have received a message to this effect from the high command,” APCC chief N Raghuveera Reddy said.
He said the alliance with the TDP would be confined at the national level only after the elections and as such, the two parties would not have any truck in the elections.
“We shall announce our future course of action in the state at a broad meeting of party functionaries in Vijayawada on January 31,” Raghuveera said.
Stating that the decision of the Congress party to go alone in the elections was concerned with the sentiments of five crore people, the PCC chief said all out efforts would be made to ensure that Rahul Gandhi would become the next Prime Minister of the country.
“We will campaign extensively and ask the people to vote for the Congress party in the best interest of the nation,” he said.
In fact, there was a talk that the Congress and TDP decided against having an alliance after the meeting of TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu with Congress president Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi recently.
Both the TDP and the Congress have realized that the alliance might backfire in AP, too, as it had in the recent assembly elections in Telangana.
Secondly, there is no guarantee that there would be transfer of votes between the TDP and the Congress.
Thirdly, if the Congress contests the elections alone, it might split the anti-establishment votes in the state thereby benefitting the TDP.