Last night, Naidu and Shah held a meeting in the presence of BJP president JP Nadda, almost five years after the TDP chief left NDA in March 2018 for failing to fulfil the promises of the AP Reorganisation Act.
At that time the BJP had dubbed him as the ‘U-Turn Babu’ and vowed not to join hands with him again. Naidu was accompanied by party MPs K Rammohan Naidu, Kesineni Srinivas and K Ravindra Kumar and former MP K Rammohan Rao.
However, political compulsions from both sides may have resulted in the meeting. Naidu has been trying to woo the BJP’s central leadership for quite some time often praising Narendra Modi as a “visionary leader” aware that a political alliance with BJP and Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena may boost his chances of coming to power in 2024 when both the General Elections as well as Assembly elections will be held in AP.
It had reaped benefits in 2014 but when he went solo in the 2019 election it had spelt disaster for him with only 23 MLAs and 3 MPs winning their seats. The BJP too had not been able to gain much political ground in AP after it parted ways with TDP. BJP’s current ally, Jana Sena had been trying to patch up things between Naidu and the BJP. The 40 minutes long meeting was aimed at breaking ice.
However, according to political grapevine the two sides also discussed Telangana polls in December this year. Although TDP has lost the political space it occupied in Telangana since the bifurcation, the BJP’s local unit may have considered TDP’s support might be beneficial in 25-30 seats.
However, last time it was Congress which had joined hands with the TDP in Telangana and paid a heavy price for supporting an “Andhra” party as BRS president and chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao utilised the narrative to the hilt warning them that if Congress wins then Naidu will be the de facto leader and the control over power and water in Telangana will pass on to Andhra leaders. Moreover, the TDP’s vote bank was decimated and it was found that its voters have been absorbed mostly by the BRS.