Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Saturday said coalition governments have provided more effective and efficient administration with consensus than a single-party government.
Naidu also exuded confidence that “political compulsion” will force all Opposition parties to come together either pre-poll or post-poll against the BJP in 2019 as some of them might be “afraid” now.
“It was a minority government (P V Narasimha Rao government (1991-1996), which brought economic reform. Coalition governments did very well. On the contrary, the Modi government, which got a massive mandate, has disappointed people. If the leader is good and effective, development will take place even in coalition. In the past, more growth and development has taken place under coalition governments,” he said.
Naidu played his facilitator role for Opposition unity in the national capital on Saturday. He met BSP chief Mayawati, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, National Conference chief Farooq Abdullah veteran socialist leader Sharad Yadav and former rebel BJP leader Yashwant Sinha.
Naidu, who was an NDA ally before pulling out of it in March this year, also announced that starting from Delhi, he will visit all states and meet Opposition leaders and try to forge an umbrella alliance for the 2019 general election.
Pressed over his party’s alliance in Telangana with the Congress, whose government decided for bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, Naidu said it was his “democratic compulsion” and made it clear that no regional parties’ alliance can come to power in 2019 without the support of one of the two main parties.
As a “seasoned politician” Naidu refused to go into the details of his meeting with Mayawati but underlined that there are “political compulsions as well as ideological compulsions” in Indian politics but “all of us have to think of interests of the nation”.
He said, “it is only (because of) political compulsion and in the overall interest of the nation, parties will join together. Some may not join before elections, some of them may join after elections.”
He added some of them are “afraid today” and slammed the Modi government for targeting Opposition leaders by “misusing” central investigating agencies and carrying raids on them and cited a number of cases lodged against various Opposition leaders after the Modi government came to power.
After meeting Naidu, NC chief Farooq Abdullah said nobody in the Opposition camp has said that a particular person is a leader of the Opposition alliance.
“Even Rahul Gandhi hasn't said that he is the leader. The issue to discuss is, whether we can sit together and contemplate how to save the nation. It's not about the leader. The chief minister came to meet me. He is trying to see whether we can save the diversity of India so that everybody from poor to rich feels that he belongs to this nation. Today, the nation is in disarray,” Abdullah said.
Kejriwal took to Twitter to describe his and Sharad Yadav’s meeting with Naidu saying they “discussed national issues.”
He alleged that present BJP government is a threat to the nation and to the Constitution and that people across India will need to join hands to save India and the Constitution.
Naidu said trained guns on Modi government on issues of job creation, corruption, GST, demonetisation and on the recent war within Central Bureau of Investigation. “It’s a two-year term for CBI Director, who is selected by a joint panel comprising of the Prime Minister, Leader of Opposition and Chief Justice of India. How can you create power centres within the CBI? Institutions are being demolished for personal and political gains,” Naidu said.
