Telangana Rashtra Samithi president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao is pretty confident that his party will get 16 seats in the just concluded Lok Sabha elections in the state and play a crucial role in the formation of next government at the Centre.
He expressed his confidence at the meeting of party functionaries at Telangana Bhavan on Monday.
He, however, did not specify whether it would be a federal front government at the Centre or not, thereby leaving it to the guessing of the party leaders and media persons that he might extend support to the NDA government which, he feels, will fall short of big number to form the government.
What is more interesting is that KCR declared that two of his party MPs are going to be ministers in the central cabinet.
It does mean, whether it is the federal front government or the NDA government, the TRS will join the government and grab two cabinet berths – may be one Cabinet post and another Minister of state post.
If such a situation arises, the two MPs who are going to get the cabinet berths in the Centre will be none other than KCR’s daughter and Nizamabad MP Kalvakuntla Kavitha and Karimnagar MP B Vinod Kumar. Both of them are expecting to win their respective seats comfortably.
Kavitha has been longing to become the central minister for quite a long time and she will definitely grab the opportunity this time.
And during a recent public meeting at Karimnagar, KCR announced that Vinod would become a central minister if he was voted to victory.
One might wonder whether KCR would recommend both Velama candidates for the cabinet berths as it might lead to a lot of criticism, but the TRS chief hardly bothers about any criticism. His team is anyway there to silence the critics.
If possible, KCR might lobby for two more cabinet berths because of the strength of the TRS in both Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha. In that situation, he might recommend the name of senior leader K Kesava Rao for the minister post.
However, there is no clarity as to what he would do if the Congress-led coalition comes to power at the Centre, instead of the NDA or a third front!