KCR meets Akhilesh for lunch with presidential election on menu

Term of incumbent President Ram Nath Kovind ends on July 25 and election is expected to be held next month

Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao (KCR) met Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav for lunch in Delhi ahead of the latest political test for the Opposition in the presidential election.

The term of incumbent President Ram Nath Kovind ends on July 25 and election is expected to be held next month.

Mr. Rao, who reached Delhi on Friday, will meet over the next two weeks Opposition leaders and travel across the country. His party, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), which so far has been supporting the government, has belatedly joined the Opposition space. On April 11, during a day-long dharna of the Telangana State Cabinet along with all TRS lawmakers, both in the Assembly and Parliament, Mr. Rao said he would bring together every non-BJP party to force the government to introduce a legal backing for minimum support price. He also said that he would be back in Delhi to initiate talks with Opposition parties on the coming presidential poll.

Mr. Rao though is clear that this anti-BJP forum must be sans the Congress. Even for the presidential election, he, according to sources, wants the non-Congress Opposition parties to take the initiative instead of relying on the Congress.

According to the sources, Mr. Yadav spent nearly two hours with Mr. Rao. This was the first meeting between the two after the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, where the SP won 111 seats. The meeting was described by party leaders as a courtesy call, but the sources, said that many national issues, including the presidential election, were discussed.

At 5:00 p.m., Mr. Rao met Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. On Sunday, he is driving down to Chandigarh to distribute ₹3 lakh to the family of each of the 600 farmers who lost their lives during the farmers agitation against the now-repealed Central farm laws. Both Mr. Kejriwal and Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann will be present at the ceremony. On May 26, he will meet former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda in Bengaluru, and later, he is making a pit stop at Ralegan Siddhi in Maharashtra to meet activist Anna Hazare. On May 29 and 30, he will embark on a tour of West Bengal and Bihar to meet the families of the soldiers who died in the Galwan Valley clashes. He will extend assistance to those families, a release said.