KCR on Mission India

​New Delhi: The 2.0 of the TRS is set to impact the national politics as planned by Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao who trounced the 'mahagathbandhan' headed by Congress in the recently-held Assembly elections to Telangana State after dissolving the Assembly ahead of its regular term, a bit earlier than planned.

Going by the inputs received from the CMO, the CM will embark on his 'national mission' on December 23. The tentative itinerary says he would be beginning his political tour by paying obeisance at the Sharada Peetham in Visakhapatnam. His next destination is Bhubhaneswar where he will be the guest of the Odisha Chief Minister, Naveen Patnaik, in his residence. After a one-on-one with Patnaik, KCR will visit Konark temple and Puri Jagannath mandir to seek Lord Jagannath's blessings. His next halt will be Kolkata where he is set to interact with the Chief Minister, Mamata Benerjee. After visiting Kali Ghat mandir, he will land in Delhi.

A visit to the temples has been carefully woven in as the Chief Minister is travelling with his family members to make his offerings to the Gods and Goddesses as his 'wish' has been fulfilled and people have voted him back with a greater majority. Of course, he does not need to embark on a 'temple-run' as others did. The CM is expected to meet Delhi CM Aravind Kejriwal who is having second thoughts on joining the 'Save Democracy Front' being mooted by AP CM Chandrababu Naidu despite having met him recently at his invitation.

KCR is also expected to meet Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav. A common binding factor in all these meets is the anti-BJP and anti-Congress theorem. KCR, unlike Naidu, is bent upon knitting a coalition of would-be Chief Ministers preferring greater powers to the States. He had been insisting on transferring several powers from the Central and concurrent list to the States which is said to have struck a cordial note with the leaders he is planning to meet.

KCR expects no problem to this arrangement as he is not insisting or picking up a PM's face ahead of the next general elections which is also the stand of parties headed by Mamata, Mayawati, Akhilesh, Naveen Patnaik and Kejriwal. The last one, Kejriwal, finds himself in a dicey situation when it comes to allying with the Congress following Sajjan Kumar's conviction in a 1984 anti-Sikh riot case and Kamal Nath (presently, MP CM) name cropping up once again. Given the numbers of the Sikh population in Delhi which stood strongly by the side of AAP all along, there is little that Kejriwal could otherwise do than joining the proposed Federal Front of KCR. Some of these leaders have already ridiculed the idea of DMK's Stalin who said Rahul Gandhi will be the PM face of the anti-BJP coalition.