VIJAYAWADA: A crisis of sorts appears to be brewing in the TDP after party chief N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday announced his decision to boycott MPTC and ZPTC elections scheduled to be held on April 8. Hours after his announcement, former Union minister and senior leader P Ashok Gajapathi Raju and party vice-president Jyothula Nehru came out openly questioning Naidu's decision.
Nehru went a step further and tendered his resignation to the party post. While Naidu reasoned there was no point in contesting the elections as "they are being held in the most undemocratic manner", the dissenting leaders countered, asserting that boycotting polls was not the way forward.
Addressing a press conference, Naidu accused SEC Nilam Sawhney of taking a unilateral decision to issue the poll notification even before consulting the political parties. "The schedule announced by the SEC is the same as announced by some ministers earlier and is also in tune with the call of the Chief Minister to complete the elections within six days. The TDP cannot expect free and fair polls under these circumstances," he said, adding that the party was forced to take the 'drastic' decision as they have no trust in the SEC going by the developments that took place on the very first day of her assuming office.
"The SEC, who called for an all-party meeting on Friday, did not even wait till the meeting was held and released the notification! Though Sawhney’s predecessor N Ramesh Kumar had written to the Union Home Secretary saying that too many violations took place in the parishad elections and YSRC leaders caused chaos during the nomination process, the new SEC did not take those issues into consideration," he pointed out.
He also charged the new SEC with ignoring Supreme Court guidelines and accused her of behaving like the government’s rubber stamp and not even following the court direction that the MCC should be imposed four weeks before the notified date of polling.
Whatever the merits of Naidu's reasoning, it did not go down well with a section of the party leaders who fumed that he should have consulted the cadre before announcing his decision. While seconding Naidu’s view that elections may not be held in a democratic manner, Ashok Gajapathi Raju, however opined, "more consultations should have been held with the party cadre".
Raju, who is also a member of the politburo, but did not attend the meeting earlier in the day, made it crystal clear that the party failed to listen to the voice of the cadre. Raju’s daughter, Aditi, went a step ahead and announced that party candidates would be in the poll fray in Vizianagaram.
Jyothula Nehru, on the other hand, clarified that though he resigned to the vice-president’s post, he would continue to be the party’s incharge of his constituency, Jaggampet in East Godavari. "The opinion of the cadre should have been taken while taking such a decision," he said, echoing Raju's view.
At the politburo meeting, a majority of the members supported Naidu’s opinion and left the final decision to him. However, senior leader Yanamala Ramakrishnudu and senior leader Ch Ayyanna Patrudu are learnt to have differed and argued in favour of contesting the polls.
This is the first time that the party has decided to boycott the elections. The dissent expressed by Raju and Nehru brought to the fore what had been brewing since the party's debacle in 2019 Assembly elections - a view that Naidu isn't listening to ground level leaders and cadres.
Naidu now finds himself in a dilemma on whether to take action against the senior leaders. Moreover, Raju is a highly-respected leader who has been with the party since its inception.