With BRS being reduced to opposition, the situation for revival of TDP in Telangana has never been so better than now since its downfall in 2014.
Published Aug 29, 2024 | 9:00 AM ⚊ Updated Aug 29, 2024 | 9:00 AM
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu. (X)
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu always pines for Telangana and the good old days when his writ used to run large.
Now that Naidu is back in the saddle in Andhra Pradesh, he has begun thinking once again about regaining the Telangana paradise, which he had lost first to the Congress in 2004 and then to the TRS (now BRS) in 2014.
In his recent visit to Hyderabad, Naidu made no secret of the fact that Telangana is never out of his mind.
He said that he was going to appoint a new president for the Telangana TDP unit soon as the party had a glorious future in Telangana. He said lakhs of TDP workers were in a dormant mode in Telangana and once he begins reviving the party, all of them would become active once again.
As the next elections in Telangana are local body polls, it is possible that the TDP might give its best shot at it. Though Naidu was evasive when asked whether the TDP would contest the local body elections, it was clear that he was giving serious thought to it. He knows it would help the yellow party to grow green shoots.
As Hyderabad has a very large chunk of Andhra population, the TDP appears to have decided to regain traction with them by contesting the GHMC elections due next year. Joining hands with the BJP and the Jana Sena, the TDP might try to repeat the Andhra Pradesh Assembly experiment in GHMC and after watching the result, fan out to the entire state.
Naidu even recalled TDP winning 15 seats in the 2014 elections in collaboration with the BJP despite a strong TRS (now BRS) wave sweeping the state then.
The Andhra Pradesh chief minister discussed the membership enrolment drive in Telangana and indicated that the party would also enrol members online. He expressed his intent to visit Hyderabad once every fortnight.
Former Minister Babu Mohan, who was minister in Chandrababu Naidu’s cabinet in the past and who after straying into the BRS and then BJP, reportedly expressed his interest in homecoming.
In his maiden visit to Hyderabad after winning elections in Andhra Pradesh, an upbeat Naidu said that the TDP would remain in Telangana and grow as it was born to serve Telugus.
The 2047 vision documents he is working on would pave the way for the development of the two states, baring one again his two eye-philosophy. During the height of the Telangana movement, Naidu used to say that Telangana and Andhra were like his two eyes which the BRS popularised as TDP’s two-eye philosophy to ridicule him.
Though Naidu never stopped dreaming about Telangana, he abandoned Telangana for a brief while, after he was arrested in September last year by the Jagan Mohan Reddy-led Andhra Pradesh government for his alleged role in a Skill Development Scam. It was when the Telangana was preparing for Assembly elections.
As the party was too preoccupied with Naidu’s arrest, it decided against contesting the Assembly elections in Telangana, dashing the hopes of the then TDP Telangana president Kasani Gnaneswar who later joined the BRS. Since then, a lot of water has flowed into Musi.
The situation for the revival of TDP in Telangana has never been so better than now since its downfall in 2014. The Telangana sentiment is behind everyone as the people are looking to political parties on how they are going to take the state forward.
The defeat of the BRS in the recent Assembly elections has proved that the people were seeking more than just slogans of self-respect for Telangana which the BRS had believed would do the trick all the time. The attempt to kindle the Telangana zeitgeist did not jell in the recent Assembly elections which led the Congress to capture power in the state.
As the BRS is no longer the ruling party and, worse still, draw a blank in the Lok Sabha elections, the party is not as strong as it used to be in 2014 and 2018 when it literally drove away Naidu from Telangana soil.
As it is more than a decade now since the formation of Telangana state, the TDP camp believes that attempts to paint Chandrababu Naidu as the principal villain of Telangana may not find traction in the changed circumstances.
With no one to whip up rancour in the state with rabble-rouser BRS having been reduced to opposition, the TDP hopes to regain its lost ground in Telangana which once used to be its bastion.
The BRS leaders too are not going after Chandrababu Naidu as they did in 2014 and 2018 when he tried to make a foray into Telangana, joining forces with the Congress. Under the heavy pounding by the BRS, TDP went down and took the Congress too along with it.
That Chandrababu Naidu has hold in Telangana was evidenced when he was arrested by the then YSRCP government in September last year. There were protests in Hyderabad to resent the arrest and a programme was organised at GMC Balayogi stadium at Gachibowli in Hyderabad in expression of solidarity with him which had elicited a huge response.
Certain belts in Hyderabad still have people who support him, particularly in about 25 Assembly segments in Hyderabad and Rangareddy.
Even in the face of euphoria over the creation of Telangana state in 2014, the TDP won 15 seats, claiming a vote share of 12.61 percent. Of the 15 seats, 10 were from Rangareddy (7) and Hyderabad (3). But when it came to the 2018 elections, the number went down to two seats in Khammam district.
The then Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao — as he got only 63 of 119 seats in 2014 — engineered the merger of 12 of the 15 TDP legislators into the BRS as they constituted more than two-thirds of the total strength of the party in the Assembly, leaving three MLAs – A Revanth Reddy, Sandra Venkata Veeraiah and R Krishnaiah. Revanth Reddy being the current Congress chief minister in Telangana.
In the 2018 elections, the TDP’s score went down to two: Mecha Nageswara Rao and Sandra Venkata Veeraiah, who too joined the BRS later, after giving a letter to the Speaker that they were merging the TDLP with the BRS.
The TDP, which gradually vanished from Telangana as KCR kept bearing down on the yellow party since the formation of Telangana state, is now looking forward to returning with a vengeance.
(Edited by Sumavarsha Kandula)
