Chandrababu’s Political Compulsion In Embracing Congress
By K Ramachandra Murthy
Hyderabad:Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu meeting Congress President Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi on Thursday completes a circle for the TDP supremo who started his career with the Congress and chose to end with the same party after forty years of flip-flop political journey. Naidu has been making twists and turns throughout his public life collaborating with almost all the mainstream political parties at one time or the other. The meeting he had with Rahul Gandhi, at the end of which both the leaders emphasised on the need for opposition unity in order to save democracy and democratic institutions, was the latest of the many U-turns Chandrababu took in his long but chequred political innings.
NT Rama Rao (NTR) founded Telugu Desam Party (TDP) with the purpose of demolishing the hegemony of the Congress. He not only succeeded in throwing the Congress out of power in Andhra Pradesh in 1983 barely nine months after the TDP was established, he also organised the splintered national opposition to come on a common platform and stand united. The Opposition conclave NTR organised at Vijayawada, within five months of coming to power, ultimately led to National Front which trounced Rajiv Gandhi government in 1989. Many of the leaders who attended the first Opposition conclave 35 years ago, such as Sharad Pawar and Farooq Abdullah, compromised with the Congress and became part of the UPA headed by Sonia Gandhi. Naidu met both Pawar and Farooq on Thursday to persuade them to join the anti-BJP front headed by the Congress. Till March this year when the TDP parted company with the NDA, the AP chief minister was calling the Congress all kinds of names accusing it of dividing the State unscientifically and doing grave injustice to the people of AP. He called Sonia Gandhi a Godse and Italian mafia. He went all the way to Delhi only to meet Rahul Gandhi to assure him that he would stand by the Grand Old Party during the forthcoming elections by all means. The irony is that he chose to meet the chief of the Congress party, which is accused of delivering a shattering blow to Andhras by depriving them of Hyderabad city, on the day the united AP was formed in 1956. For more than four years, Chandrababu was prasing Modi and his vision. He was taking Tirupati laddu and shawls to Delhi to felicitate Modi and Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. He accepted the special financial package in place of special status. The promise on Kadapa steel plant was not pursued vigorously. Railway zone remained in the realm of imagination. Still, the TDP chief did not think of a confrontation with Modi.
The TDP supremo waited patiently for years for two demands to be met by Modi. He visited Delhi for more than 25 times to put pressure on the Union government to fulfill them. The first demand was to increase the number of Assembly seats by going for delimitation of the constituencies. It could not be done since the procedure would require time and a majority in Rajya Sabha which the NDA did not have till recently. The second and more important demand was to see that the CBI cases against Opposition leader YS Jagan Mohan Reddy are rushed through and he be convicted and put in jail as soon as possible. The CBI courts would take their own time and the charges are not backed by evidence. The allegations are most likely to fall flat. There was nothing that the NDA government could do about it. Chandrababu lost his patience and walked out of the alliance. He started talking about Special Status only after snapping his ties with the NDA.
Realising that his party’s stock has been falling fast and that of the main Opposition party, YSRCP, has been gaining popular support, the AP CM had to do something to remain in the contest in 2019. The BJP and the Jana Sena which were TDP’s allies in the last elections had since fallen out. TDP never fought any election alone. It was against this background that alliance with the Congress both in Telangana and AP had become a political compulsion for Chandrababu. As he himself told the media in Delhi, the TDP entered into election pacts with various parties only out of election compulsions and not ideological affinity. For him, it is only the target that changes with shift in strategies. Till now it had been Sonia and Rahul whom he called ‘Pappu’ and mercilessly attacked. Henceforth, it would be Modi and Amit Shah. There are no compulsions for Chandrababu on account of values or ethics. He follows them only in their breach. The biggest example is the defection by 23 MLAs from YSRCP to TDP with impunity. Four of the defectors were made minister unscrupulously. In order to stay in the game and save the party in Telangana, Chandrababu had sent his confidante Revanth Reddy to the Congress. Then, he offered to have electoral alliance with the Congress to fight against the TRS. Then it was extended to AP when Chandrababu met Rahul and forged an alliance.
It is not for the first time that the TDP president met his Congress counterpart. As a convenor of the United Front, he met Sitaram Kesari when the latter was presiding over the Congress party in the process of making Deve Gowda and IK Gujral prime ministers. Chandrababu, who was a young chief minister, was doing the legwork while Harkishan Singh Surjeet and Karunanidhi were taking major decision between 1996 and 1998. Now, he has appointed himself as a facilitator who would bring various Opposition parties of different hues in order to bring about unity of anti-BJP forces. The AP CM hopes his national role would help his party in AP. NTR’s soul would have lost its peace once again.
