Telangana Chief Minister Chandrashekar Rao in Ranchi, meets Hemant Soren as part of efforts to form a federal front

Although officials who are part of his entourage stressed that Chandrashekar Rao’s visit to Ranchi was marked by warmth and friendliness, there is no denying the fact that the TRS supremo’s upcountry sojourn did not pan out the way he wanted it to.

Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao with Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Rakesh Tikait, in New Delhi on March 3.

After a three-day visit to Delhi, which by all accounts turned out to be a damp squib, Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao met his Jharkhand counterpart and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha chief Hemant Soren in Ranchi for a luncheon meeting on March 4.

The Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) supremo, who is on a self-declared mission to cobble up a third or federal front to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), arrived in the Jharkhand capital by a special flight. He was accompanied by his cabinet colleague V. Srinivas Goud, his daughter and Legislative Council Member K. Kavitha, Member of Parliament J. Santosh Kumar, Telangana State Planning Board member B. Vinod Kumar, Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar and TRS general secretary Sravan Kumar Reddy.

In Ranchi, the Telangana Chief Minister handed over cheques of Rs.10 lakh to the kin of two soldiers from the Indian Army’s Bihar Regiment who lost their lives in 2020 when Indian and Chinese troops clashed in Eastern Ladakh at Galwan Valley on the Line of Actual Control. Chandrashekar Rao also assured financial support to the families of the 19 jawans who died in that bloody skirmish.

Although officials who are part of his entourage stressed that Chandrashekar Rao’s visit to Ranchi was marked by warmth and friendliness, and a plethora of banners which proclaimed him as an ‘Achiever of Telangana State’ and ‘National Federal Front leader’, there is no denying the fact that the TRS supremo’s upcountry sojourn, which had been pregnant with political expectations, did not pan out the way he wanted it to.

Prior to Chandrashekar Rao landing in Delhi, functionaries from the TRS had insisted that on top of his agenda was a meeting with Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. The meeting did not fructify. Neither was he able to meet any of the other top non-Congress, non-BJP leaders. He met the Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Rakesh Tikait and BJP Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament Subramanian Swamy.

In a bid to forge a grand alliance against the BJP, Chandrashekar Rao in recent times met his　Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu counterparts Uddhav Thackeray and M.K. Stalin respectively, Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, left leaders from both the CPI and the CPI(M), and even the political and election strategist Prashant Kishor.