KCR Welcomes Danam Nagender, Followers Into TRS

Former minister and Congress leader Danam Nagender today joined the TRS fold in the presence of Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao.

KCR welcomed Nagender and his followers, including some women, with pink shawls at the Telangana Bhavan, along with Deputy Chief Minister Mahmood Ali, Home Minister Nayani Narasimha Reddy, ministers Padma Rao Goud and Talasani Srinivas Yadav, and others.

Addressing a huge gathering of TRS leaders and workers at the party headquarters, the Chief Minister assured good opportunities and an excellent future for Nagender in the ruling party.

"Some more leaders are likely to join the party soon, and the state will race ahead on the growth trajectory with the support of all of them. Our aim is to achieve all-round development and work for the welfare of all sections, and that is the reason we welcome leaders from anywhere into the party," he said.

KCR's statements virtually confirmed the restarting of his "Operation Akarshan" to engineer defections in the opposition parties' ranks.

There is speculation that Nagender's close friend and another former minister and Congress stalwart Mukesh Goud, and the latter's son Vikram Goud, a youth congress leader, will also follow suit shortly.

KCR also claimed that his party was well prepared to face the elections even if they were held well in advance, and declared that it would win over 100 Assembly seats in the coming elections, and that the Congress nominees would lose their deposits. This was indicated in the surveys conducted by the party, and he would shortly make public the survey report, he said.

The Chief Minister warned the opposition parties to desist from playing dirty and cheap politics for votes. He highlighted the various welfare and developmental programmes initiated by his government since the formation of Telangana, and said that the state occupied the number one position in the country today. The pro-farmer policies and the welfare programmes for backward classes and minorities were attracting many leaders into the TRS from other parties, he claimed, to preempt any criticism of engineering defections.