Hyderabad, November 6: After a hiatus of nine years, Tollywood actor and Jana Sena Party (JSP) President Pawan Kalyan is set to share the stage with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Hyderabad on Tuesday. The occasion is the ‘BC Atma Gourava’ (Backward Caste self-respect) public meeting at LB Stadium.
Pawan Kalyan accepted the invitation from BJP Telangana state President G. Kishan Reddy to join the Prime Minister in addressing the event. JSP, as a constituent of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), has decided to contest the Telangana Assembly elections in alliance with the saffron party. The ongoing seat-sharing negotiations between the two parties are said to be in the final stages.
Last year, Pawan Kalyan met the Prime Minister after a gap of eight years during Modi’s visit to Visakhapatnam. Following that meeting, he expressed hope that it would bring prosperity to Andhra Pradesh in the future.
Recently, Pawan Kalyan announced that his party would contest the 2024 elections in Andhra Pradesh in alliance with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP). He extended an offer to the BJP to join forces to prevent a division of anti-YSRCP (Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party) votes, but the BJP’s response is still pending.
In the 2014 elections to the state Assembly and Lok Sabha, Pawan Kalyan supported the TDP-BJP alliance. While JSP did not participate in the elections, the actor campaigned for the alliance and addressed public meetings alongside Modi and TDP leader N. Chandrababu Naidu.
However, JSP later distanced itself from both the BJP and TDP due to their failure to grant special category status to Andhra Pradesh, as promised during the state’s bifurcation in 2014. In the 2019 elections, JSP formed an alliance with Left parties and the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), but managed to win just one seat in the 175-member Assembly, with Pawan Kalyan himself losing in both seats he contested.
