Monday, Aug 12, 2013
Hyderabad: BJP campaign committee head and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s move to extend the olive branch to the Telugu Desam party in the name of “anti-Congressism” has left the regional party in confusion.
Modi’s invitation came in the backdrop of some TDP leaders from Telangana region evincing interest in an alliance with the BJP for the coming elections, hoping that it will benefit the party.
Similarly, Chandrababu Naidu’s brother-in-law and popular film star N Balakrishna, who is also showing a keen interest in playing an active role in the party, surprised everybody by personally visiting Modi at his hotel.
However, Balakrishna tried to clarify that he had met Modi to invite him to a wedding of his second daughter. But the fact that Balakrishna sat through Modi’s closed door address to the high profile personalities from the city, did not go unnoticed.
This has triggered the speculation that either Balakrishna, along with some other party leaders, was charting an independent course on the issue of future alliance with the BJP or he had the tacit support of Chandrababu Naidu to keep a back door open for the future.
For the record, however, Naidu has ruled out the possibility of an alliance with the BJP. According to party sources E Dayakar Rao, senior party leader from Warangal in Telangana region and others raised the issue of alliance with the BJP but Naidu told him that this was not the right time to discuss the issue of alliances.
Leaders like Dayakar Rao and R Prakash Reddy were apprehensive that in case of an alliance between Congress and the TRS, TDP will not have any future in Telangana and will be vanquished in the next elections.
Similarly the BJP alone will also find the going tough in the region.
At a closed door meeting, attended by some other party leaders including Y Ramakrishnudu, and K Rammohan Rao, Naidu wondered how the party can join hands with the BJP as it could result in the permanent loss of Muslim support. He recalled that the party had to pay a heavy price for its alliance with the BJP from 1998 to 2004.
Muslims were completely alienated from the TDP over the fact that Naidu continued TDP’s support to NDA even after the pogrom in Gujarat under the rule of Narendra Modi.
Time and again Naidu promised that he would never again have a tie-up with the BJP.
Narendra Modi, in his address to youth rally in Hyderabad, had paid generous tributes to TDP founder NT Rama Rao for his role in bringing all the non-Congress parties together and making a non-Congress government at the centre possible. He invited the TDP in the name of NTR legacy to join hands with the BJP to put an end to Congress rule.
By Mohammed Siddique Correspondent
Gulf News 2013. All rights reserved.
