Congress president Rahul Gandhi and Telugu Desam Party leader and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu will share dais at their first public meeting at Khammam tomorrow to campaign for “grand alliance” candidates in Telangana’s assembly elections.
This is the first time two top leaders of the Congress and TDP will be sharing the stage at an election rally since they agreed to work together to form an alliance of non-Bharatiya Janata Party groups at the national level.
In a dramatic shift of TDP’s stand towards Congress, Naidu met Gandhi this month and they agreed to bury the past and work together to unite opposition parties.
Congress Party’s Telangana unit working president Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka and TDP leader Nama Nageswara Rao yesterday visited the Government Degree College in Khammam where the ‘grand alliance’ public meeting will be held.
They said the public meeting will not only bolster the alliance’s campaign but will be significant for national politics.
Vikramarka said the meeting would send a message to the whole country.
The Congress is leading the ‘grand alliance’ in Telangana which includes the TDP, the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Telangana Jana Samithi (TJS).
TDP’s Telangana unit chief L Ramna and leaders of CPI and TJS shared dais with Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi at a public meeting at Medchal near Hyderabad on Friday.
For the Khammam public meeting, the Congress has also invited CPI general secretary S Sudhakar Reddy and TJS leader M Kodandaram.
Elections for 119-member assembly will be held on December 7.
The Congress has fielded candidates in 94 constituencies leaving the rest for its allies. The TDP is contesting 13 seats.
Meanwhile the BJP’s campaign in Telangana is set to gather further momentum with Prime Minister Narendra Modi scheduled to address two election rallies in the state today.
Modi will address the first meeting at Nizamabad at 11am and will then reach Mahabubnagar to address another meeting in the afternoon, state BJP leaders said.
These meetings are expected to intensify the campaign of the BJP for the elections.
According to BJP’s Telangana unit president K Laxman, Modi will again campaign in Telangana on December 3.
He will address a public meeting in Hyderabad.
BJP president Amit Shah on Sunday addressed four public meetings in different parts of the state. He is scheduled to address more meetings tomorrow and on December 2.
The party is contesting all 119 assembly seats on its own.
Also yesterday, Gandhi promised to waive off farmers’ loans in 10 days if the Congress formed a government in Rajasthan which goes to polls on December 7.
“Our party had promised farmers in Punjab and Karnataka elections loan waivers and we waived farmers’ loan there,” Gandhi said adding that he doesn’t make false promises unlike the prime minister.
He also ridiculed the planned bullet train. He said the Indian Railways had an annual budget of Rs1 lakh crore and transported millions of people but the cost of a bullet train that will carry around 2,000-3,000 people to Mumbai a day was almost the same.
He was addressing an election rally in Jalore in Rajasthan.
“And the profit of this train will be passed onto industrialist Adani and not to the poor of the nation. It should be named Adani railways.” 
Gandhi also questioned reasons for removing the chief of the Central Bureau of Investigation at the stroke of midnight. It was because he was investigating the Rafale deal with France, Gandhi said.