The BRS accused Congress MP Rahul Gandhi of hypocrisy, preaching secularism in Telangana while having Shiv Sena, a rightwing Hindutva party, as an alliance partner in adjoining Maharashtra.

A day after Gandhi returned to Delhi on Saturday after the first phase of campaign, BRS working president K T Rama Rao attacked him for calling his party a “B-team of the BJP” and warned that the state Congress president Revanth Reddy was steadily building his own brigade and would join the BJP with 10-12 Congress MLAs after the elections.

“Who is the Congress in bed with in Maharashtra? Shiv Sena, an absolutely anti-Muslim party… You are entitled to run a government for Shiv Sena, you are entitled to be in an alliance with Shiv Sena … Then you come to the adjoining state and preach us secularism? What moral right do you have,” asked KT Rama Rao.

He also slammed Gandhi for suggesting that AIMIM was helping the BJP by giving candidates in states like Rajasthan and Maharashtra reminding him that Congress had been in alliance with AIMIM in 2004-2014.

He recalled that the Congress helped the BJP win MP seats of Karimnagar and Nizamabad and ran two local bodies in Telangana with an alliance with the BJP. Both the Congress and BJP do not want regional parties to expand.

He also warned that PCC chief Revanth Reddy was building up his own team of MLAs within the Congress so that he could jump the ship in future. “The president of Congress in Telangana is preparing his own brigade in Telangana to eventually turn a renegade and jump the ship and join the BJP,” he said.

Rao also said since the BJP was no longer in the race in Telangana and it is going to be a bipolar contest with the Congress and the BRS left in the fray.

“BJP is a goner. They lost the perception fight. Whatever Narendra Modi and Amit Shah might like to believe, it is a gone case for them. It is a fight between Congress and us,” declared Rao. He also slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for declaring that the BRS had funded the Congress win in Karnataka.

“What kind of absurd and nonsensical logic is this? Didn’t we not know if the Congress wins in Karnataka, it would have an impact on Telangana!” he wondered.

BRS MLC Kalvakuntla Kavitha dubbed Rahul Gandhi as a paper tiger who simply parrots whatever his speech writers write for him.