TDP leader Gangula Prabhakar Reddy has called a meeting with his supporters at Allagadda in Kurnool district on Sunday before joining the YSRC. The development is set to prove one thing. In Rayalaseema politics, rival factions mix the way oil mixes with water even if they are in the same party.
When Telugu Desam Party supremo Chandrababu Naidu admitted Nandyal YSRC MLA Bhuma Nagi Reddy and his daughter and Allagadda legislator Akhila Priya into the party, Gangula family took a serious objection to his decision and put it bluntly to the party leadership that they would not be able to sail with him.
Naidu ignored the protest, thinking that those who are against Bhuma would somehow bury the hatchet, but it has not worked out that way. Gangula is now planning to join Jagan Mohan Reddy camp. It should serve as a wake-up call for the TDP leadership on how it handles Rayalaseema equations, which are getting more convoluted of late.
Naidu has been unhappy with the Kurnool leaders for winning only three of the total 14 Assembly seats in the last elections and wondered aloud several times as to why he should go out of the way to favour them. And Naidu’s strategists, using their skills of political chicanery, had succeeded in landing three YSR Congress MLAs in the party, taking the TDP tally to seven in the district. But this is where Chandrababu Naidu seems to have gone wrong.
He did not foresee how those who are already in the TDP would react to admissions from the YSRC since Kurnool is a hot bed of factional politics.
If Bhuma’s admission into the party has alienated Gangula, it has had the same effect on Silpa brothers -- MLC Silpa Chakrapani Reddy and former minister Silpa Mohan Reddy, who is in-charge of party in Nandyal.
After Bhuma has migrated to the TDP, the two leaders are not having much say in the party and they have more or less decided to wait and watch if Naidu would accommodate him in the cabinet, in which case they might walk out of the TDP.
They had even made no bones about their reservation over admitting Bhuma into the party before Naidu himself, but the latter overrode them and welcomed the Nandyal MLA into the party since his political objective was to deal a blow to Jagan rather than get bogged down in issues of maladjustment at the constituency level which he thought would sort themselves out or the leadership at the district level would be able to do so.
In neighbouring Kadapa district also, the situation is more or less same. Though Naidu had accorded priority to provide irrigation facility to Pulivendula, ignoring the need for such a facility in his own Kuppam constituency, his party leaders have not been able to generate goodwill that could be transformed into votes.
In fact, Naidu has been giving priority to Kadapa since he wants to hurt Jagan on his home turf, but his political calculus is not working out that way.
This is because in each of the 10 constituencies in the district, the party is divided into factions and are working at cross purposes forgetting Naidu’s principal aim of making inroads into Jagan’s bastion.
In fact, Naidu recently warned them against continuing to remain a divided house. He is understood to have told them that if they do not mend fences and work for the victory of candidates in the elections for graduates and local body constituencies of the legislative council, he would not see them again.
This apart, the way the ministers’ sons, MLAs and MLCs are conducting themselves should be a cause for concern for the party.
For instance in Kurnool district, spotlight is now on KE Krishna Murthy’s son Shyam Babu against whom there were serious allegations of illegal sand mining from Handri riverbed using heavy machinery.
The Hyderabad High Court has indicted officials for not even inquiring into the allegations made in a petition submitted to the chief minister. May be or may not be Krishna Murthy’s son is guilty, but the High Court’s observation as to why officials did not inquire into the complaints implied that they were afraid of the ruling party bosses, a development that hardly enhances the TDP image.
This apart, the TDP leaders at the district and constituency level appear to have become a law and unto themselves. Of late, there has been a spate of such attacks which do not bode well for the party.
Apart from attacks in Andhra region, the assault on a widow by a TDP sarpanch in Anantapur district had shown how arrogant and intolerant the party leaders have become.
The sarpanch was caught on camera, kicking the widow for objecting to construction of a water trough in front of her house in a piece of land belonging to her.
As ruling TDP leaders show signs of arrogance in dealing with people despite Naidu asking them to maintain a people-friendly image, his rival Jagan is making a silent and steady progress which may or may not have caught the attention of the TDP supremo.
His three meetings - the first at Narasaraopet in Guntur, the second at Dwaraka Tirumala in West Godavari and the third at Uravakonda in Anantapur - were huge a draw.
In Narasaraopet, former chief minister Kasu Brahmananda Reddy’s grandson Mahesh Reddy joined the YSRC, in Dwaraka Tirumala, Naidu’s one time senior colleague Kotagiri Vidyadhara Rao’s son Sridhar turns up beside Jagan, while in Uravakonda, the YSR Congress chief’s public meeting to censure the TDP government drew a huge crowd. Now, Gangula’s imminent exit from the TDP.
The developments are sending out loud signals to the Telugu Desam Party to begin remedial measures before it is too late.