The sudden comradeship cultivated by Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao with Prime Minister Narendra Modi surprised many. No other chief minister, even BJP Chief Minister could get an audience for a long time of 40 minutes with the prime minister, KCR in post-demonetization period.
In fact for the first two weeks, KCR was silent on demonetisation. Except expressing concern this was leading to huge revenue loss for his government, he hardly makes any moves to rescue the suffering public by promoting digital payment. But he became jubilant and pro-active after receiving an `unexpected’ call from the Prime Minister.
Fortunately, it was West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Benerjee’s aggressive posture against Narendra Modi on this issue and attempts to bring together all opposition parties for a united struggle, makes prime minister to be cautious.
After Mamata Banerjee and her Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal got together to protest, Modi is keen to ensure that other non-BJP chief ministers do not join hands with them. Immediately he reached out to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and KCR. In fact many times, KCR made futile attempts for an appointment with prime minister.
Though, KCR had a quiet meeting with Modi and abstained from joining the opposition protest, Akhilesh Yadav’s meeting at Parliament was made headlines by BSP supremo Mayawathi. Akhilesh, who always refers her as ‘bua’ (aunt), called her in angry as the second “BBC.” He said, “Bua Bro-adcasting Corporation is being seen on TV quite often these days.”
Congress leaders too in Telangana trying to took advantage of Modi-KCR meetings and started accusing that only to protest his `family interest’ (black money) he met the prime minister. Opposition leader in legislative council Mohammad Ali Shabbir demanded to made public details of Modi-KCR talks during their three meetings in a week.
