K Ramachandra Murthy

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief Nara Chandrababu Naidu has taken up the campaign to save the country and democracy from the clutches of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Naidu went to Bengaluru on Thursday to motivate former prime minister Deve Gowda and Karnataka Chief Minister Kumara Swamy to join him in the battle against the saffron army. The fact that both Deve Gowda, chairman of the JD(S), and Kumar Swamy have been sharing power with the Congress since the last Assembly polls does not deter Naidu from claiming the credit for bringing the father-son duo into the alliance for which he is the self-anointed facilitator. The AP chief minister is slated to visit Chennai to persuade DMK president Stalin to work for the united opposition. Stalin has been sailing with the Congress since the inception of UPA-I. He does not need to be goaded into doing something that he has been doing for more than 15 years.

Why is Naidu projecting himself as a national leader to repeat his 1996 performance, as suggested by Kumara Swamy the other day? Would it be good for the country if the 1996 experiment is replicated by Naidu or someone else? What are Naidu’s credentials to talk of democracy and strive to save it? Let us answer the last question first. Naidu was an MLA way back in 1978 elected on a Congress ticket. He was a staunch supporter of Sanjay Gandhi, the dreaded son of Indira Gandhi, the architect of the Emergency regime which suppressed the fundamental rights of the people and jailed thousands of opposition leaders across the country. Naidu continued to visit Delhi and meet Sanjay even after the Emergency was lifted and the Congress was trounced in the ensuing elections. After losing to the candidate representing the TDP, founded by his father-in-law NT Rama Rao against whom he boasted to contest in 1983 elections, he meekly left the Congress to join the ruling party (TDP). He did not have any compunction in leaving the party that made him a legislator at a very young age and to join a party whose avowed policy was to decimate the Grand Old Party from the political scene. Naidu maintained a low profile for some years winning over the party leaders and cadres creating a group of his own without the supremo’s knowledge. In the Assembly elections held in 1994 he got his friends and followers party tickets through persuasion and manipulation and funded their campaign. NTR’s second wife Laxmi Parvati, who entered the thespian’s life a couple of years earlier, was shown in poor light with unconditional help from friendly media describing her as an evil force. NTR was called a henpecked husband who could not stop his ambitious wife from interfering in party matters and governance. Naidu plotted at Viceroy hotel and dethroned the person who won absolute majority for his party a few months ago. While the script for the coup was written by Ramoji Rao of Eenadu, it was meticulously implemented by Naidu. It was nothing short of stabbing in the back of a democratically elected leader. Intrigue and machinations became the hallmark of Naidu’s politics.

Master of manipulation

The ease with which Naidu switches sides and changes his alliance partners has been truly remarkable. He outsmarts a chameleon in this regard. When he snatched the reins of power from NTR, the mandate given by the people to an alliance of the TDP and the Left parties in 1994 was subverted. Soon after taking over, Naidu said Communism has no place in modern times and tourism was more important than Communism. At the same time, he was dealing with Communist stalwarts like Harkishan Singh Surjeet and Ardhendu Bhushan Bardhan in his capacity as convenor of the United Front. However, when the TDP got only 12 Lok Sabha seats as against 22 of the Congress in 1998 elections, he snapped his ties with the Left parties, walked out of the UF and migrated to the BJP. When simultaneous elections were held for Lok Sabha and AP Assembly, the TDP became a full-fledged partner of the BJP sensing the pro-Vajpayee sentiment post-Kargil war. The AP chief minister was known to have arm-twisted the Vajpayee government to get extra funds for projects that benefitted his friends. He became unpopular with the reforms he tried to introduce in the power sector by unbundling AP Electricity Board. The Congress and nine Left parties mounted a huge movement against power sector reforms which culminated in ‘Chalo Assembly’ while late Dr YS Rajasekhara Reddy, the Opposition leader, and others were on an indefinite fast. The massive march to the Assembly was mishandled by the police who opened fire on the crowd killing two persons. The stock of Naidu’s government was at the nadir when the Naxalites exploded a landmine under the car carrying the chief minister, a minister and an MLA at Alipiri ghat road on the way to Tirumala. The CM providentially survived the attempt on his life. He assumed on seeing thousands of people, that thronged his residence at Jubilee Hills to express their concern for his wellbeing, that there was a groundswell of sympathy which would greatly help him win the third consecutive term. Naidu prevailed upon Prime Minister Vajpayee to go for early elections. Both the BJP and TDP lost the elections miserably and the UPA headed by the Congress came to power in Delhi while Dr YS Rajasekhara Reddy, who walked from Chevella in Ranga Reddy district to Ichapuram in Srikakulam district a year before the elections, formed the Congress government winning 185 out of 294 seats. Soon after the results were announced, Naidu declared that he would never again go for an alliance with the BJP in his life. Come 2009 general elections, the TDP was back in league with the Left parties and lo and behold, the TRS whose sole purpose was to fight for separate Telangana statehood.

Yet another U-turn

There was yet another U-turn by Naidu in 2014 when he entered into a poll-pact with the same BJP which he said ten years ago he would not touch with a barge pole. He also went to the residence of Pawan Kalyan, a cine hero, and persuaded him to support the TDP-BJP alliance. He lived with the NDA headed by the BJP for four years and then suddenly exited, sensing the mood of the people who were giving a rousing reception to YS Jagan Mohan Reddy in all parts of the state during the latter’s walkathon. Then he took upon himself the responsibility of uniting the opposition. The most opportunistic and unethical decision by Naidu was to go for a tie-up with the Congress, the sworn enemy of the TDP, which is sure to make NTR turn in his grave. By inviting the TDP into his fold, Congress president Rahul Gandhi helped his rival K Chandrasekhara Rao (KCR) of the TRS. After the TDP joined hands with the Congress in Telangana State, the popularity and winning chances of the TRS had gone up. With Naidu joining hands with Rahul, the circle of the most opportunistic alliances was complete as far as Naidu was concerned. In Telangana, the CPI is in the alliance with the TDP and the Congress besides Telangana Jana Samiti (TJS). One need not be surprised if Naidu hugs both the Left parties in AP for the third time in 2019 elections.

People are skeptical about the democratic credentials of Chandrababu Naidu. The TDP won more than one hundred seats in the Assembly elections in 2014 in the residual State of Andhra Pradesh. It could have comfortably settled for governance. But habits die hard. Naidu tried to buy out an MLA in the neighbouring Telangana State in order to help a TDP MLC candidate. Even if he succeeded in winning one MLC seat, it would not have made any difference to Naidu or the TDP. But his habit of manipulation forced him to indulge in corrupt practices for which he had to pay a very heavy price by running away from Hyderabad where he could have stayed for ten years after bifurcation. As many as 23 MLAs elected on YSRCP ticket were bought over by Naidu in blatant violation of anti-defection law and made four of them ministers. This shameful act was condoned by Governor ESL Narasimhan who administered the oath of office to the turncoat-ministers. Naidu never in his rule devolved powers to panchayat raj institutions and local bodies. Instead, he ruled through ‘Janma Bhoomi Committees’ comprising TDP workers. In this background, Naidu masquerading as a saviour of democracy in the country is the biggest joke.

A futile experiment

The 1996 experience Kumara Swamy was referring to would not do any good for the country. The two governments that were formed when Naidu was the convernor of the United Front did not together last even two years. Both the governments headed by Deve Gowda and IK Gujral were felled by the wily Sitaram Kesri, the then Congress president, who used to say, “Mere paas samay nahin hai (I don’t have time).” He pulled the rug from under the feet of prime ministers at his will. Deve Gowda became prime minister thanks to PV Narasimha Rao who preferred to sit in opposition after the polls, in which the Congress got only 140 seats, and recommended the name of Deve Gowda, the then Karnataka chief minister. Both Deve Gowda and Inder Kumar Gujral were, in fact, finalised by DMK’s supreme leader M Karunanidhi and CPM’s Harkishan Singh Surjeet. As a convenor, Naidu was facilitating the meetings and implementing the suggestions given by the seniors. The two governments were the most unstable and unproductive governments except that Gujral made some progress in futhering Indo-Pak ties to a certain extent. Naidu’s present efforts to organise the Opposition Front are aimed at carving a national role for himself since his time as AP CM is getting over with absolutely no possiblity of winning the forthcoming elections. He has no credentials either to save the country or democracy. He is an unscrupulous leader who made elections in the country prohibitively expensive. He has perfected the art of managing the democratic institutions and abuse them for his own personal benefit. Such a leader pretending to save democracy in the country, is a mockery. There is, however, a real threat to democratic institutions from the saffron brigade. But Naidu is not the leader who can protect them. People cannot rely on a person who systematically manipulated the institutions for decades. They have to bet on some other leader.

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