T Cong for TRS merger, not tie-up

• Leaders tell Digvijay Singh the party can win on its own in T
• Singh urges them to open channels with MIM for tie-up
• He will meet KK today in final attempts to hammer a deal

Hyderabad: While the Congress leaders from Telangana are strongly opposed to any kind of alliance with TRS, the party leadership still appears to be pinning some hopes on the possibility of some deal with the pink party.

Though on record, the party leaders claim that they are going ahead with preparations to contest 119 Assembly seats and 17 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana, the AICC general secretary in charge of state affairs, Digvijay Singh, is likely to meet the TRS leader K Keshav Rao on Friday.

Singh came here on Thursday on a three-day visit.

Digvijay Singh interacted with T leaders including MPs, MLAs, MLCs and other leaders at Gandhi Bhavan. He indicated that the first list of candidates would be released between March 22 and 25 after taking the views of the members of the party election committees of Telangana and Seemandhra. The party appears to be in a mood to utilise this time to see if a deal with TRS could be struck.

During the two-hour-long meeting, he sought the opinions of leaders on key issues like the promises that need to be included in the manifesto and electoral alliances. He asked the party leaders to open channels with MIM for poll alliances.

The T Congress leaders are said to have strongly opposed any kind of alliance with TRS. They are of the view that merger is the best option. If TRS is not ready for merger, then the Congress should go it alone, the T leaders told Digvijay. They even argued their case on the basis of statistics of votes polled by TRS during the 2004 elections when Congress had alliance with TRS.

According to a source, there was some opposition from MP Ponnam Prabhakar over the presence of Rajya Sabha MP Renuka chowdary.

Meanwhile, Rajya Sabha member T Subbarami Reddy has been inducted into the election committee of the Congress Party for Seemandhra. In a press release, he claimed that he had been made the member of the Seemandhra Congress election panel. He further divulged that Digvijaya had asked him to attend the meeting of the Seemandhra election committee, to be held on Friday.