Politics is a game in which anything goes and its rules change according to the players’ skills. The effort towards building an anti-BJP front, with or without the Congress, has gained momentum yet again, with Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao (KCR) meeting his Maharashtra counterpart Uddhav Thackeray and NCP boss Sharad Pawar in Mumbai on Sunday. KCR and Thackeray said that they have agreed to work together in bringing about change in the country—to remove the Bharatiya Janata Party from power in New Delhi and elsewhere in the country. KCR said they would be talking to all like-minded parties, including the Congress, to join hands.

This is the second such Maharashtra visit by a non-BJP CM. West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee was in Mumbai a couple of months ago, but created a stir by expressing her resolve to keep the Congress away. KCR seems to have learnt a lesson from that episode. He did not upset the national party by endorsing Mamata’s viewpoint. Thackeray’s Shiv Sena and NCP chief Sharad Pawar, who KCR met later in the day, had maintained then that there cannot be a formidable collective without the Congress.