VIJAYAWADA: The unusual outburst of Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao against his Andhra Pradesh counterpart N Chandrababu Naidu hasn’t come as a surprise to Telugu Desam leaders. Quite the contrary.
Having firmed up an alliance with the Congress in Telangana, the TDP top brass believes the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) supremo’s vitriol only reinforces their conviction that the pink party is feeling the heat in the poll-bound State.
“It shows his frustration,” a senior TDP leader told TNIE, claiming that KCR is increasingly getting unnerved over the prospects of his party as the grand alliance in Telangana is “surging ahead”.
Incidentally, TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu, earlier in the day, had an informal chit-chat with his cabinet colleagues on Telangana politics.
For the second time, Naidu let it be known that he had sent feelers to KCR to join hands with the TDP in the interests of the two Telugu States but that the TRS chief was entrapped by the BJP.
“He is under the spell of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The BJP’s game plan is to hit the TDP hard in AP with the help of KCR,” Naidu is quoted to have said.
Their moves ought to be seen in the context of the efforts underway to bring all the non-BJP parties together, Naidu reportedly explained and cautioned his colleagues not to speak about his prime ministerial prospects as that might undermine the Maha Ghatbandhan exercise at the national level.
A senior minister said the cash-for-vote case too had come up for discussion. It was felt that the recent I-T raids on Congress leader Revanth Reddy were done at the behest of the Centre, and the possibility of the Centre “similarly targeting” TDP leaders in AP was also discussed.
Privately, party leaders dismiss the possibility and opine, any such move would only help the TDP and backfire badly on the BJP. Though TDP leaders haven’t yet retaliated, their strategy in the days to come would be to launch a blitz in Telangana with the “message” that KCR is in bed with the BJP. The logic for the same being that AP voters in TS see both KCR and BJP as having harmed AP more than the Cong.