Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) president and Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) will address a public rally at Nanded in the neighbouring Maharashtra state on Sunday, party leaders said on Saturday.
It will be the first public meeting of KCR outside Telangana and the second after the rechristening of his Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) as BRS on December 9.
The first public rally of the BRS was held at Khammam on January 18, which was attended by several national leaders, including Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Singh Mann and Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan, besides Akhilesh Yadav of Samajwadi Party and D Raja of Communist Party of India.
Telangana forest minister A Indrakaran said on Saturday that massive arrangements had been made at Bhokar grounds in Nanded town for the public rally. “The entire venue has been decked up with pink flags, banners, hoardings and huge cut-outs of KCR, besides balloons and stickers,” he said.
Along with Reddy, government whip Balka Suman, MLAs Jogu Ramanna, Md Shakeel and senior leaders Gyadari Balamallu and Ravinder Singh have been camping at Nanded to oversee the arrangements for Sunday’s rally.
“Over a lakh people from Nanded town, Naigaon, Mudkhed, Degloor, Loha, Kinwat, Dharmabad, Umri and Himayatnagar areas are expected to turn up for the public rally of KCR. Besides, people from bordering areas of Telangana, including Adilabad, Boath, Mudhole, Bodhan, Nirmal, Jukkal and Nizamabad areas, are also expected to attend in big numbers,” Reddy said, adding that all steps have been taken to ensure that there was no inconvenience to the crowds.
A BRS leader, who is involved in the arrangements for the meeting, said Nanded has a sizeable number of Telugu-speaking people who have close relations with their counterparts in Telangana in the border districts.
“Sarpanches and other public representatives from several villages in Dharmabad and Nanded mandals have been regularly meeting the BRS leaders constituency in Telangana to study the welfare and development model of Telangana. Last year, some even came to Pragati Bhavan and met the chief minister,” he said.
Soon after KCR announced the launch of BRS in October, around 25 sarpanches from Lingareddy and Dharmabad mandals in Nanded district had a meeting at Basar in Nirmal district and resolved to resign from their posts and join the BRS. They expressed their willingness to contest on behalf of the BRS in the upcoming local body elections in Maharashtra.
Dharmabad taluk sarpanches association president Surekha Patil Hotte told reporters that they would extend their support to the BRS, as they were impressed by innovative policies and governance in Telangana. She cited Rythu Bandhu, and Rythu Bima, uninterrupted supply of power to the agriculture sector, among others.
The forest minister said during Sunday’s rally, several sarpanches and other leaders would join the BRS. Last Thursday, former MP Chhatrapati Sambhajiraje — the 13th descendant of Maratha hero Chhatrapati Shivaji — met KCR and extended support to the BRS.
On Saturday, several former MPs and other senior leaders from Maharashtra met KCR at Pragati Bhavan and enquired about the schemes being implemented in Telangana. “They welcomed KCR’s national mission and said the country needs his leadership at this stage and expressed interest in joining the BRS,” an official statement from the chief minister’s office said.
The BRS is planning to hold its next public meeting on February 17 at the Parade Ground in Secunderabad after the inauguration of Telangana’s new secretariat complex.
The meeting would be attended by Tamil Nadu chief minister M K Stalin, his Jharkhand counterpart Hemant Soren, Bihar Deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav and JD(U) national president Lalan Singh, who will be representing Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar. Dr B R Ambedkar’s grandson Prakash Ambedkar, the chief of the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA), is also expected to attend, the statement said.
