Exuding confidence that the next Mahanadu would be organised by the Telugu Desam Party after returning to power in 2014, party supremo N Chandrababu Naidu on Tuesday said that the TDP would play a crucial role in ensuring that a non-Congress and non-BJP formation would come to power at the Centre.
“Telugu Desam Party would play a key role in ensuring formation of a Third Front either with pre-poll or post-poll alliances and facilitate emergence of an efficient, stable and responsive government at the Centre,” Chandrababu Naidu said, while speaking on the political resolution of the party adopted on the second and final day of the party’s annual conclave Mahanadu at Gandipet on Hyderabad’s outskirts.
The second day’s conference began on an upbeat note with the party celebrating NTR’s birth anniversary at the venue. Earlier in the day, the entire NTR’s family paid tributes to the towering leader at the NTR Ghat. Chandrababu Naidu, before leaving for the venue of Mahanadu, visited the ghat and paid his respects.
NTR’s daughter Daggubati Purandeswari, her husband Venkateswara Rao, film actor Nandamuri Harikrishna and his son NTR Jr were among those who turned up at the ghat. In a brief interaction with the media, NTR Jr said he fully supported all the initiatives of his grandfather and wanted Telugu Desam Party which he founded to come to power. He, however, said he did not attend Mahanadu since no one had invited him. “There was no invitation for me,” he said while his father Harikrishna said the entire NTR family was one and there were no differences.
Barring NTR Jr’s absence at the Mahanadu which left a discordant note, the conference got off to a colourful start with the party leaders speaking on several issues, cornering the three major parties in the state -- Congress, YSRCP and the TRS.
Chandrababu Naidu, fresh from his Vastunna Meekosam Padayatra, was full of energy and with his torrential rhetoric, he tried to enthuse the party functionaries and dispel any notion that they may have over the outcome of the elections in 2014. “We are going to win the elections. The TDP, as ruling party would hold the next Mahanadu,” Naidu said, as the youth among the delegates cheered him lustily.
Naidu also dwelt on the raging Telangana issue, and said that his party had not deviated even a degree from its original stand. “The TDP is committed to Telangana but the decision has to be taken by the Centre,” Naidu said and asserted that this was the gist of the communication the party had sent in 2008 to Pranab Mukherjee Committee.
“Since then our stand had not changed and at the recent all-party meeting convened by Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, the same stand had been conveyed,” Naidu said.
The TDP supremo described as a bluff TRS chief K Chandrasekhar Rao’s claim that the TRS would win 15 Lok Sabha and over 100 Assembly seats in the general elections.
“The TRS has never won a good number of seats in any general elections. Only in byelections, it had won some seats,” Naidu said. Referring to the YSRCP, he said that it would merge with the Congress once cases are lifted and YS Jagan Mohan Reddy gets bail.
“Already behind-the-screen efforts are going in this direction,” the former chief minister said.