Future of Regional Parties, not so promising—Murlidhar Rao

Pragya Bharati an intellectual forum based at Hyderabad conducted a symposium on National Politics: “Prospects and Challenges in Telugu states” on August 1, 2015 at the prestigious Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in Hyderabad. This meet was addressed by BJP National General Secretary P Muralidhar Rao under the Chairmanship of Dr T H Chowdury, Ex M D BSNL. Shri Murlidhar Rao stressed that in future, the national parties are most likely to dominate and hold the sway. Barring a few, every regional party that is hereditary in composition and nepotism rules the roost. In Tamil Nadu  both the ruling and the opposition parties are regional parties and one fails to understand their stand on national issues like Kashmir Conflict. He expressed his displeasure at regional parties dominating for four decades and national issues have to be kept at the back burner simply because they have no political stakes.
Taking a dig at the Congress, he said, dynastic politics lead to degeneration thereby hindering development. Vote bank politics has its own   pitfalls of democratic systems around the world. Political parties playing vote bank politics generously dispense freebies to minorities for their votes, he lambasted.
Extolling the virtues of Telugu states and its people he said that its contribution to the fields of technology, science and economics across the world was significant. On future of two Telugu speaking states he said, resources are vast and urged leaders not to divide the people for narrow political gains and urged a common agenda for the benefit of all. He also took a dig at MIM, saying, “Things they do are not acceptable for national politics and their issues are at best parochial.”
Dr Chowdury in his introductory remarks said that the nation still reverberates with Mahatma Gandhi’s call for ‘Sarva Dharma Sambhav’ (Equal respect for all religions). But the contradictions within the governments of Independent India become evident when you see their approach to matters related to religions, particularly special privilege showered on particular religious minorities under Article 29 and 30 of the Constitution and demanded no preferential treatment to any community.    —N Nagaraj Rao from Hyderabad