The BJP state leadership strongly feels that the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) is trying to keep their party away from contesting the byelections as winning even one seat will help the BJP a lot in term of strengthening the party in Telangana, becoming an alternative to the TRS and emerging as a strong political force in the 2014 elections.

This view was expressed by party top leaders in the recent meeting on byelections conducted with district presidents in Hyderabad.

The BJP state leadership feels that not allotting the Mahbubnagar seat which was not represented by a TRS candidate to the BJP, and the TRS fielding its candidate is a deliberate attempt to keep the BJP out of byelection fray.

Relations between the BJP and TRS have dipped to a nadir in the recent past, and the TRS is not taking well BJP’s efforts to strengthen its base and organise public meetings and its Telangana Poru Bata by state president G. Kishan Reddy.

Speaking to this newspaper, party district president Ravula Ramnath alleged that the TRS leadership, especially K. Chandrasekhar Rao, feared the BJP’s increasing popularity among people of Telangana.

The BJP leadership claims that they are strong in Station Ghanpur, Mahbubnagar, Kamareddy and Adilabad and the winning chances of TRS in these seats will be affected if they field their candidates here in the byelections.