Daijiworld Media Network – Hyderabad

Hyderabad, Sep 9: BRS working president K T Rama Rao on Monday strongly countered Congress leader Jairam Ramesh’s remarks over the Vice-Presidential election, declaring that the BRS is the “A-team of Telangana people” and not a B-team of either the BJP or the Congress.

The rebuttal came after Jairam Ramesh suggested that abstaining parties were implicitly siding with the BJP. Clarifying his party’s stance, KTR said the BRS’s decision to abstain from voting was a political message against the failures of both the national parties and their neglect of Telangana’s farmers.

Despite the INDIA bloc fielding Telangana’s own B Sudarshan Reddy as its candidate, the BRS said its boycott was a protest against the ongoing urea shortage that has hit farmers hard. KTR alleged that neither the BJP-led NDA at the Centre nor the Congress government in Telangana had responded to the agrarian crisis. “Had NOTA been an option, we would have chosen it,” he said, stressing that the party has no issues with the individual candidates.

Rejecting the “with us or against us” approach of national parties, KTR accused the Congress of being stuck in arrogance and entitlement. “Jairam Ji, this sense of entitlement and arrogance is what made Congress fail in contemporary politics. We are neither the B-team of Congress nor the B-team of the BJP. We are the A-team of Telangana people,” he asserted.

The BRS leader further advised the Congress to reflect on its own failures instead of discrediting regional parties through “false binaries.” With four Rajya Sabha MPs, the BRS reiterated that its decisions will continue to be guided by Telangana’s interests rather than Delhi-centric power politics.