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Published Dec 12, 2025 | 2:46 PM ⚊ Updated Dec 12, 2025 | 2:46 PM
N Chandrababu Naidu and Nara Lokesh. (X)
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu is, mildly put, climbing the walls — and not for fitness reasons.
The TDP chief is fuming over the spectacular mess his own party leaders managed to create during a debate on Republic TV.
The chaos began when one of the party’s spokespersons, Deepak Reddy, casually tossed Nara Lokesh’s name into the IndiGo flight disruption controversy — as though Lokesh was moonlighting as a civil aviation troubleshooter.
Anchor Arnab Goswami, never known for understatement, erupted instantly, demanding to know what Lokesh had to do with civil aviation and why Minister K Rammohan Naidu had vanished from the radar.
Stung by Goswami’s trademark firestorm, TDP leaders promptly declared — unilaterally — that they would be boycotting Republic TV. Predictably, Goswami responded in prime-time dramatic fashion, placing an empty chair on his set to represent the TDP.
At this point, Naidu decided the circus needed its curtain dropped. Breaking his silence, he clarified that neither the state government nor the TDP had anything to do with the IndiGo crisis. The matter, he said pointedly, was being handled by the Civil Aviation Minister and the Prime Minister — as it should have been obvious from the start.
When Naidu visited the party office in Mangalagiri on Thursday, 11 December, his simmering irritation finally boiled over. Venting his frustration, he reminded party leaders that press conferences and TV debates were not internal chats where one could freestyle casually.
If the spokesperson had simply stated that the party had no role in the IndiGo issue and that Rammohan Naidu and the Prime Minister were handling it, the entire melodrama could have been avoided.
While Naidu didn’t directly reprimand the leader who claimed that Lokesh was “monitoring the issue,” he made it abundantly clear that spokespersons needed to know the party line, their limits, and when to stop talking — or preferably, not start at all.
He even announced plans to designate two ministers and two leaders to brief spokespersons regularly so that future TV appearances don’t end in explosions worthy of prime-time theatrics.
Meanwhile, Rammohan Naidu — who became a national punching bag for going off the grid during the peak of the flight chaos — has slowly begun resurfacing in public. Once bitten and twice shy, he now appears at events and is taking tough questions.
Though he did not show his face during the crisis, he insists he didn’t sleep a wink, as he was “deeply seized of the matter,” consulting with the Prime Minister throughout. Graciously acknowledging the trust Narendra Modi and Chandrababu Naidu have placed in him, he asserted that he is a minister of both “words and deeds.”
He also assured citizens that they can fly without fear, and that normalcy has returned at all airports — a message delivered with the confidence of a man who has finally switched his phone back on.
