Hyderabad: With political analysts predicting hung Parliament after the Lok Sabha elections, neutral parties will play key role in setting the tone for NDA and UPA alliances. Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), YSRCP and Biju Janatadal (BJD) are expected to bag maximum number out of 63 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. This will give these three parties an edge in not only lobbying with the Centre, but also deciding who should form the government at the Centre, said a senior political analyst, while adding that TRS, YSRCP and BJD didn’t participate in Kolkata public meeting hosted by Paschim Bangla chief minister Mamata Banerjee. These three parties are neither part of NDA nor UPA.
After sweeping Assembly and Gram Panchayati elections, Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao’s next aim is Target-16 as he wants to bag 16 out of 17 Lok Sabha seats in the state leaving Hyderabad Parliament constituency to friendly party AIMIM.
Coming to Andhra Pradesh, which has 25 Lok Sabha seats, YSRCP is expected to win over half of the MPs. Out of 25 MP seats in AP, TDP won 15, YSRCP eight and BJP two in 2014 elections. YS Jaganmohan Reddy has already announced that he would extend support to whoever awards Special Category Status (SCS) to AP.
Back to Odisha, BJD never supported Congress since its inception in 1997. Odisha chief minister Navin Patnaik and BJD chief parted ways with BJP and contested on his own in 2014 elections and won 103 out of 145 Assembly seats and 14 out of 21 Lok Sabha seats. Recent survey predicted that BJD may sweep all the 21 Lok Sabha seats.
With these conservative calculations, TRS, YSRCP and BJD may have minimum of 50 Lok Sabha seats to dictate terms at the Centre. SP and BSP have already announced their decision to maintain equal distance with Congress and BJP. If Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav join the bandwagon of Federal Front, the total tally may reach a well comfort level of 100 plus more than enough to influence the decision making at the Centre.
TRS working president KT Rama Rao often says that neither Congress nor BJP would get the magic figure of 273 seats in Lok Sabha elections. Hence, neutral parties under Federal Front will play decisive role at the Centre.
