Blog: How To Read KCR's Meeting With Stalin Today

Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao will meet DMK chief MK Stalin in Chennai today after an earlier request for an appointment was thwarted. Why would KCR, as he is known, a Chief Minister who won a colossal majority in his state and is predicted to win a majority of the Lok Sabha seats in Telangana, travel to meet Stalin, an opposition leader in a neighbouring state? That too when he knows that leader is part of an alliance with the Congress that KCR had earlier distanced himself from?

When May 13 was initially announced as the date on which KCR would meet Stalin, the enthusiasm on the Telangana Chief Minister's side was not met with quite the same excitement and warmth on the DMK side. Stalin was declared as busy with campaigning for crucial by-elections to four Tamil Nadu assembly seats on May 19 and the meeting was then put on hold.

Confirmed now for today, the session has been described as a courtesy call. "When the Chief Minister of a neighbouring state is visiting, we must meet him as a matter of courtesy,'' a DMK source said, urging that political observers need not read more into the meeting.