A day after Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekar Rao’s talks with Maharashtra Chief Minister and Shiv Sena president Uddhav Thackeray and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar to stitch up an anti-BJP front, the Maharashtra Congress leadership said no grand coalition of Opposition parties was possible without the Congress.

Mr. Rao, the president of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), had held talks for several hours with both Mr. Thackeray and Mr. Pawar during his day-long visit to Mumbai on Sunday, but did not meet any leaders from the Congress in Maharashtra.

The Congress is in alliance with the Sena and the NCP in Maharashtra where the three parties have formed the ‘Maha Vikas Aghadi’ coalition against the BJP.

Remarking that a Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was the only viable option against the BJP, Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee chief Nana Patole said Mr. Rao’s anti-BJP alliance could not succeed without the Congress’ participation.

“The BJP government at the Centre is acting in an authoritarian manner, bent on destroying the Constitution. While Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao making efforts to unite regional parties against the BJP’s dictatorship, it will not succeed without the Congress,” Mr. Patole said.

Commenting on Mr. Rao’s ‘Maharashtra mission’, Congressman and Maharashtra Energy Minister Nitin Raut said perhaps regional parties were thinking of forming an anti-BJP front at the regional level before taking on the saffron party at the national level.

“The Congress is more than 100 years’ old. It has a presence in every nook and cranny in the country. So, if opposition parties are thinking of forming a grand opposition without the Congress, they should realise that such a thing is not possible. [NCP chief] Sharad Pawar himself has said that such a front is not possible without the Congress,” said Mr. Raut.

As during West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) chief Mamata Banerjee’s visit to Mumbai in December last year with the similar object of trying to stitch up an anti-BJP front, Congress leaders were conspicuously absent in talks that Mr. Rao held.

Responding to questions of the Congress’ absence, Sena MP and chief spokesperson Sanjay Raut stressed that his party had never said that there would be an anti-BJP front without the Congress.

“When Mamata Banerjee first spoke of this [an anti-BJP front without the Congress], the Shiv Sena was the first political party to say that the Congress has to be part of any anti-BJP coalition,” said Mr. Raut, speaking in Nagpur today.

Ineffective: BJP

Scoffing at the opposition parties’ efforts to form a ‘grand coalition’ against it, the BJP said that similar efforts had been tried in the past, but had proved unavailing and would have “no effect” on the saffron party in the future.

Former Chief Minister and the BJP’s Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis said, “I don’t think much of all this…all these parties had tried to form coalitions against the BJP in the last Lok Sabha election as well. They tried this experiment in Uttar Pradesh and in other States… but they have not met with any success against the BJP anywhere.”

BJP MP Manoj Kotak took potshots at Mr. Rao’s visit, noting that as always, the opposition parties had side-lined the Congress while holding talks among themselves.

“This proves yet again that the Congress is no longer a force to be reckoned with,” said Mr. Kotak.