Chandrababu Naidu re-enters Telangana to revive TDP as KCR aspires national role with BRS

Even as he is struggling to regain power in Andhra Pradesh, former chief minister Chandrababu Naidu has made a re-entry into Telangana politics.

Interestingly, the TDP supremo is testing the Telangana waters again when his political rival and two-time Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has targeted “a pivotal role” in national politics with his new enterprise Bharat Rashtra Samiti.

Naidu was in person wading in Telangana politics four years back, during the state Assembly polls. The TDP had contested only 13 seats in alliance with the Congress, and CPI and managed to win two seats – both in Khammam.

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In the 2014 polls, when Naidu went with the BJP, TDP had bagged 15 seats, despite the formation of Telangana state.

The party's Telangana Assembly presence at present is nil, after having lost most of its elected representatives to the ruling BRS while some like the present TPCC chief Revanth Reddy shifted to the Congress.

Babu's re-engagement with the state now comes after KCR dropped the electorally sentimental word 'Telangana' from the name of the party formed in 2001 with the whole purpose of achieving statehood.

Even in his 2018 election rallies, KCR described his former party TDP and its chief Naidu as “Telangana drohi (traitor),” for allegedly opposing separation.

Political observers and even some Telangana Congress leaders like MLA Jagga Reddy opine that KCR's BRS decision has let Naidu become active in Telangana as the party “lost its self-patented right over Telangana sentiment.”

Addressing a massive public meeting in the party's erstwhile stronghold Khammam last week, Babu – as he is popularly referred to in the two Telugu states – expressed confidence that TDP will regain the past glory in Telangana.

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Leaders might have left, but people are with us, Naidu stated even as he invited his former Telangana colleagues back home.

Naidu even showed the ample gathering as proof “to those who question TDP's existence in Telangana.” The 72-year-old politician was particularly happy that most among his audience were youth, several of them born after May 2004 – the last time when Naidu was the chief minister of united Andhra Pradesh, ie., for the Telangana region too.

These first-time voters in next year's Telangana polls are among the priority sections the party is reaching out to.

"I struggled to make Hyderabad an Information Technology (IT) hub with a vision that our Telugu youth should get better employment and thus more earnings. You can see the outcome – Andhra Pradesh, Telangana youth are in the IT field across the globe," Naidu told the cheering crowd on Wednesday.

Naidu's speech was conspicuous for not targeting KCR or the ruling BRS, which some political analysts connected to the 2015 MLC elections cash-for-vote scam case hanging over his head.

Naidu's haste in moving the Andhra Pradesh administration to Amaravati in 2015-16, while the state reorganization act allowed Hyderabad as common capital till 2024, was attributed to the alleged pressure put by KCR on his former boss with the case.

A senior TDP leader differed with the view. “Our meetings now are aimed at consolidation of our strength in Telangana. Confrontation with KCR or any other party is not our strategy. We want to remind people what TDP – with NT Rama Rao's welfare and Naidu's futuristic vision – had done for the region,” the leader told DH.

Buoyed by the Khammam meet success, the TDP is planning such big public meetings – one in each of the 10 undivided Telangana districts every month in the run-up to the polls scheduled next winter.

As part of the Telangana unit revival efforts, Naidu made Kasani Gyaneshwar, a BC leader who was earlier with TDP, the T-TDP chief.

Party leaders are however sceptical as to the number of Assembly seats the TDP, a shadow of its former self, could contest and expect to win in a contest that is increasingly appearing will be centred between the BRS and the BJP.

Political observers say that TDP's entry could prove beneficial to KCR, as it can split the anti-incumbency vote, especially in the border areas with Andhra Pradesh.

In Andhra Pradesh, Naidu's bete noire, YSRCP chief and CM Jaganmohan Reddy has targeted a win in all the 175 Assembly seats next time.

From Khammam, Naidu went back to address TDP meetings in mainstay Andhra Pradesh.