Mamta, Kejriwal to address TDP's rally in Vizag today

Visakhapatnam: In a show of strength, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal is all set address a huge public rally in Visakhapatnam in support of Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam Party at a mega rally in the port town on Sunday evening.

Though many other leaders from the proposed grand alliance of anti-BJP parties including Janata Dal (Secular) president Deve Gowda, DMK chief M K Stalin, Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar, RJD leader Tejaswi Yadav and former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdulla were invited to the rally, but they expressed their unwillingness due to hectic campaigning in their respective states, a senior TDP leader said.

Earlier Abdullah had addressed a series of rallies in Andhra Pradesh's Rayalaseema region while Kejriwal had attended the TDP rally at Vijayawada last week.

"Deve Gowda will join the campaign for the TDP next week. More leaders are expected to participate in various rallies to express their solidarity with the TDP," the senior TDP leader said.

The three-hour rally of the TDP will commence at NTR stadium in Old Visakhapatnam at 5.30 pm. After the rally, all the three chief ministers will stay back in Visakhapatnam to discuss the national scenario and work out strategies in the coming days.

Like Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam is a cosmopolitan city with a large number of people from West Bengal, Odisha and northeastern states living in the port city for education, employment and business activities. "We are hoping that Mamata's campaign would help garner their votes," the TDP leader said.

Congress though is staying away from the Visakhapatnam rally because the party is fighting the elections independently in all 175 assembly and 25 Lok Sabha constituencies in Andhra Pradesh.

According to TDP's spokesman Lanka Dinakaran, the party will win Visakhapatnam Lok Sabha seat with unprecedented margin as people of the state are against the government at , which is led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "Modi has betrayed the mandate of Andhra Pradesh people by not granting special status to the state. The BJP candidates will lose its deposits in all seats," Dinakaran said.