With regional aspirations weighing on his mind, Telangana chief minister and Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) founder K Chandrasekhar Rao will skip the Opposition meet in Patna on June 23.

KCR has conveyed to Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, whose efforts have got prominent Opposition parties on a common platform, his inability to attend the meet. According to sources, KCR does not want to be part of any Opposition initiative which gives space to the Congress. A senior BRS functionary told ET, “KCR garu has always talked about a non-Congress and non-BJP front. This meeting goes against the basic principle he stands for. He cannot be seen sharing space with the Congress.”

The decision to skip the Opposition meet has been a well considered decision. Congress is the principal challenger of KCR’s BRS in election-bound Telangana. While KCR’s party had won 88 seats in the 2018 assembly election, Congress was a distant second but the second-largest party winning 19 seats. Sharing a common platform with Telangana’s main Opposition party could send conflicting signals to the electorate in an election year.

With central investigative agencies issuing successive summons to KCR’s daughter Kavitha Kalvakuntla, the chief minister also does not want to be seen directly taking on the BJP government at the Centre. At the same time, KCR has spearheaded several efforts to cobble up an Opposition alliance and fancies himself as the chief architect. Attending an initiative called by Nitish Kumar would mean ceding that space.

Even before the 2019 parliamentary elections, KCR and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee had come together to forge an Opposition front. However, the efforts just yielded a rally in January 2019 and no real attempt at a rainbow coalition to take on the might of the BJP.