The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday finalised its alliance with Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena in Andhra Pradesh for the upcoming Lok Sabha and state Assembly elections.
TDP supremo Naidu and Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan met Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP national president JP Nadda in Delhi to finalise the seat sharing agreement for the state and general elections scheduled to be held simultaneously.
Speaking to reporters, Naidu said Andhra Pradesh has been destroyed hy the ruling Jagan Mohan Reddy government and that the coming together of the BJP and TDP is a win-win situation for the country and the state.
According to sources, a tri-party joint statement is likely to be released soon which will be followed by an NDA rally in Guntur on March 17.
The talks were initially met a dead end after the BJP demanded 10 of the 25 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
However, the TDP is believed to have convinced the BJP that it is the principal Opposition party in the state and will contest on 17 seats. The saffron party has been given six seats, while two seats will go the Jana Sena.
The alliance is crucial for both the TDP and the BJP. While the BJP need it to reach its target of 400-plus NDA seat in the Lok Sabha elections, the TDP wanted it to gain it’s lost ground in state.
In 2019, Reddy’s YSRCP had swept both the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, winning 22 and 151 seats, respectively. The TDP could only manage three lok Sabha and 23 Assembly elections.