By Nageshwar Patnaik in Bhubaneswar, December 23, 2018: A day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Odisha, Telengana chief minister K Chandra Skhar Rao who was just sworn in for second time, met chief minister Naveen Patnaik here on Sunday to explore an alternative federal front ahead of the Lok Sabha polls next year.

Rao is touring the country to bring regional forces together to cobble up an alternative to both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress party.

Soon after meeting Naveen, KCR said that the two parties (his Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD)) are in talks for launching an alternate front.

“We are in talks for an alternate front in the coming days”, he said.

Rao lambasted Modi for calling him a B team of Congress saying, “I m a B team of Congress. Let me tell you. I am neither a part of Congress nor the BJP”.

Rao asserted that there is a need to talk to more people across the nation for the unification of regional parties as there’s a strong need for an alternative to Congress and BJP.

KCR is also scheduled to fly to Kolkata to meet West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

After a meeting with Banerjee, Rao will visit Kalimata Temple. Subsequently, he will leave for New Delhi, where he will have separate meetings with former Uttar Pradesh chief ministers Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav.

KCR, who led TRS to a landslide victory in assembly election in December, has announced that he would focus on national politics to work for cobbling up an alternative to both the BJP and the Congress party.

After the electoral victory on December 11, he had stated that a consortium of regional parties might emerge soon.\