Congress-TDP strike poll deal? Ex-bureaucrat bridge with Rahul Gandhi

HYDERABAD: Congress and Telugu Desam Party have hammered out an understanding for Assembly and general elections in Telangana, reliable sources told TOI.


Koppula Raju, former IAS officer and senior Congress functionary, and Congress leader Madhu Goud Yashki, mediated between Congress president Rahul Gandhi and TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu, highly-placed sources said.

“An electoral understanding has been reached between Rahul Gandhi and Chandrababu Naidu in Telangana that they will unitedly take on TRS. However, the issue of seat-sharing is yet to be finalised,” said sources.

Raju, a 1981 batch IAS officer, is head of the Congress core team and hand-picked by Rahul Gandhi for the job. A Dalit leader, Raju, earlier headed the party’s Scheduled Castes department from August 2013 till he was given charge of the core team in January 2018. Raju served under Naidu too when the latter was chief minister. In fact, it was Raju who spearheaded the women’s selfhelp groups in united Andhra Pradesh that drew global eyeballs, including attention of Rahul Gandhi.

Madhu Yashki Goud, former Congress MP from Nizamabad, is also close to Rahul and accompanied the Congress president in his European tour in August this year.

“Through good offices of Raju and Madhu, both Rahul and Naidu are convinced an electoral understanding between Congress and TDP will be mutually beneficial,” said the sources.

Despite Naidu shifting out of Hyderabad and becoming chief minister of Andhra Pradesh post-bifurcation, TDP still has major pockets of supporters, particularly in assembly constituencies that fall under Greater Hyderabad. In 2014 elections, the TDP-BJP combine won 14 of 24 assembly seats with the former bagging 9 of them.

Since 2014 elections, most politicians who won on TDP ticket have migrated to TRS. However, the TDP still wields influence in the assembly seats of Jubilee Hills, Secunderabad Cantonment, Sanathnagar,

Serilingampally

, Qutballapur, Kukatpally, LB Nagar, Maheshwaram and Rajendranagar. It is this that Congress in combination with the TDP want to encash on.