Telangana Rashtra Samithi president and chief minister K Chandasekhar Rao on Sunday flew down to Mumbai along with a host of TRS leaders to meet his Maharashtra counterpart and Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray to discuss the strategy for putting up a combined fight against the Bharatiya Janata Party.
KCR went straight to Thackeray’s residence Varsha in Malabar Hills and introduced all his party colleagues to the Maharashtra chief minister. Later, the team had a lunch with Thackeray.
Later, he would go to the residence of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar and hold a brief discussion.
For the first time, KCR took his daughter and MLC K Kavitha along with him to Mumbai. Though there was a talk that he would take his nephew and finance minister T Harish Rao, he was not found in the delegation at the last moment.
The others who were in the chief minister’s team were: MPs BB Patil, G Ranjith Reddy, J Santosh Kumar, Rythu Bandhu Samithi chairman and MLC Palla Rajeshwar Reddy and TRS general secretary Shravan Kumar Reddy.
But the man who made a surprise appearance at the meeting of the TRS leaders with Thackeray was popular actor Prakash Raj.
It is not immediately known whether he went to Mumbai along with KCR or he was present at Thackeray’s residence when the TRS delegation came there.
The connection between Shiv Sena and Prakash Raj is also very surprising and strange; and why he was allowed to join KCR’s meeting with Thackeray is also a mystery.
Till now, Prakash Raj’s political connections with TRS or any other party have not been revealed.
Several supporters of TRS and Shiv Sena put up hoardings en route from Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport to the Maharashtra Chief Minister’s residence, welcoming Chandrashekhar Rao to Mumbai. Hoardings with messages of ‘Desh ki Netha KCR’, were put up on the arterial roads of Mumbai.
Calling Chandrashekhar Rao, Uddhav Thackeray and Sharad Pawar as leaders who “stood for their people’s pride and self-respect”, the separate flexi banners termed them as leaders “now standing together for nation’s pride and self-respect”.