VIJAYAWADA: With TDP supremo N Chandrababu Naidu announcing 40% of party tickets to youth in the ensuing elections, the Telugu Desam leadership has laid emphasis on identifying young leaders with winning prospects. As several young leaders, heirs of TDP seniors, are playing an active role in the party programmes, the TDP leadership has decided to constitute a committee to pick youngsters with leadership qualities.
The TDP Politburo special meeting held under the chairmanship of Naidu recently, discussed at length on involving youth in party affairs. Speaking to TNIE, a Politburo member said TDP general secretary Nara Lokesh came up with a proposal to constitute a committee to draw a clear policy in the direction of giving priority to the youth in the party. All the members of Politburo echoed the same opinion. It was resolved to constitute a committee, which will make a comprehensive study and submit a report to the party with suggestions on injecting new blood into the party.
Generally, around 25% of candidates are being replaced with new nominees in every election. With the TDP supremo’s decision to allot 40% of seats to youngsters, the number of new faces in the next elections is set to go up, said a senior leader. However, he felt that accommodating young leaders other than heirs of seniors will become a herculean task to the party leadership with respect to the constituencies represented by seniors.
“It will be difficult to convince the seniors to make way for a young leader other than his or her heir,” the leader stated. The TDP, founded by matinee idol and former Chief Minister NT Rama Rao in 1982, recently completed 40 years and the party leadership felt that there is every need to encourage youth for the survival of the party for some more decades. However, a section of leaders is of the view that focusing on young leaders alone will not help the party achieve good results and the party should also utilise the services of seniors.
“In fact, several youths, including Paritala Sriram (son of Paritala Ravindra), Gali Bhanu Prakash (son of Muddukrishnama Naidu), Kimidi Nagarjuna (son of K Mrunalini), Aditi Gajapathi Raju (daughter of Ashok Gajapathi Raju) and some others entered the fray in 2019 elections. But all of them lost their maiden election. This is an indication that the party cannot bank on the youth factor alone to win the next elections,’’ another leader observed.