After nearly a fortnight of deliberations and uncertainty, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership have struck an electoral alliance for the ensuing Lok Sabha and State Assembly elections.
The alliance has materialised after several major hiccups. Problems of integration are expected to continue to have impact at the ground level when the seats get allocated to various parties. The alliance was struck as the BJP State leadership was insisting on allocation of higher number of seats in both the regions and also certain select constituencies.
The broader arrangement is for 8 of the 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana and 45 of the 119 seats in the Assembly. With regards to Seemandhra, both the parties have agreed to share 5 Lok Sabha and 15 Assembly constituencies with BJP, while the latter is demanding higher number of Assembly seats. However, the insistence of certain constituencies was cited as a major hurdle in sewing up the alliance.
Both the BJP Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and TDP Chief N Chandrababu Naidu’s are learnt to be keen to sail together and strengthen each other. While there was little doubt that the deal would be through, the local BJP leadership was firm on certain seats and segments.
Even before the news of the likely alliance trickled in, addressing a press conference, Telangana BJP leaders said that they were opposed to a pact with TDP and prefer to go it alone. They also dashed of a letter to BJP leader Prakash Javdekar, who is busy holding talks with TDP. Already there are rumblings in the BJP Seemandhra leaders about the seat share.
The issue relates to not just the number of seats but which seats respective parties get. The latter had held up the alliance for over more than a week.