Telangana is witnessing a very interesting battle -with Congress entering into a tie up with its main enemy of three decades, the Telugu Desam party – for an alliance to take on the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi. In the grand alliance with Congress and TDP are CPI and regional formation Telangana Jana Samithi, which together have a poll arithmetic that can unseat the ruling party, which is facing anti-incumbency.

On the ground, even ministers of the Telangana government are finding the going touch with people asking them very searching and hard questions on unfulfilled promises. Chief Minister and TRS Chief K Chandrashekhara Rao had dissolved the assembly eight months ahead of schedule in the hope of securing a victory. In fact, he did not want to give enough time for his opponents to regroup but this is what exactly his announcement of early polls did –it only hastened the process of formation of a grand alliance.

Here in this alliance, the Congress is the elder partner and is contesting 95 seats whereas the TDP in 14 and the TJS in 8 and CPI in two seats. The seat allocation has led to severe disgruntlement, but the sources in all the opposition parties indicated that there will be a little bit of give and take as the ultimate objective was to defeat the ruling party.

On Monday, the alliance partners will be sitting down for a final seat sharing talks after the TDP. TJS and CPI sought a few more seats to satisfy their own leaders.

The polls percentage arithmetic favours the coalition of opposition forces, something that no one in the state had anticipated.

In fact, it is being understood that the Telangana grand alliance could be the template over which an alliance for the 2019 general elections would also be formed. With this in mind, Andhra Pradesh chief minister and TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu has reached out to the Congress and other political players in the country to form a non-BJP grouping to beat the BJP.

If the opposition gets together, then arithmetically it will be on winning wicket. Which is why the BJP is making all out attempts to make it a Modi versus Rahul Gandhi contest that it hopes will give it an outright victory.

The Congress on the other hand would like not to name a leader of the coalition and would want the leader of the coalition to be chosen after the general elections. Which is why none of he opposition leaders are coming out with the name, lest this issue divides the opposition and paves the way for the BJP return.