Has Naidu given away too much to ride the Modi wave?

Hyderabad: Has Chandrababu Naidu bent backwards while proffering his friendship to the BJP and formally realigning with the National Democratic Alliance? Going by the number of seats he has ceded to the latter even at the risk of inviting rebellion in the TDP, the answer is yes. As per the seat-sharing arrangement arrived between the BJP and the TDP, the BJP will contest five Lok Sabha seats and 15 assembly seats in Seemandhra and eight Lok Sabha seats and 47 assembly segments in Telangana. While the party seems to have extracted a good bargain in its stronghold, Seemandhra, it has virtually surrendered in Telangana. Though Naidu has tried to give the impression that he has condescended to the BJP and let it be the Telugu Desam’s junior partner in the upcoming elections as far as Andhra and Telangana are concerned, he had to demonstrate more humility than usual in asserting that “neither the TDP nor the BJP is either superior or inferior to each other” soon after reaching the pre-poll accord. [caption id=“attachment_1471939” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Has the TDP given away too much to ride the Modi wave? PTI[/caption] Naidu, who in the aftermath of the 2004 elections, was contrite about his association with the BJP and lost no time in breaking ties with it,  has now extended an olive branch to the party, but not without any reason. He is definitely not so naive a politico to give in just like that. While the BJP is pinning hopes on the soaring popularity of Narendra Modi, the TDP supremo also wants to piggyback on the ‘wave’, exactly the way he did in the 1999 general elections. In fact, G Kishan Reddy, the Telangana unit president of the BJP, insinuated enough to irritate the astute Naidu during the talks between the two parties to renew their friendship. Nevertheless, it was Naidu who has had his way, while letting Kishan Reddy feel that he too has had his say by conceding 47 Assembly seats to the party in the Telangana region alone. Take a look at the performance of the BJP in Andhra Pradesh. Its vote share in a joint venture with the TDP in 1999 dwindled from the 18 percent it gained in the 1998 Lok Sabha elections when it went to polls alone, to just nine percent. On the contrary, the TDP’s vote share improved and the combined entity secured about 50 percent, as opposed to the Congress party’s vote share of 43 percent, in 1999 in Andhra Pradesh. The 2004 elections were the worst for the combine, individually and collectively, though together they grossed close to 42 percent of the vote share. The Congress-led alliance with the Communists had nixed the resurgence of the NDA in the State. At that time, Chandrababu Naidu had left 45 Assembly seats and nine Lok Sabha seats to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (of which it won a niggardly 10 and two respectively), and 16 Assembly and two Lok Sabha seats each to the Communists in 2009 general elections as part of the Grand Alliance. The TDP, in fact, fared well, winning 39 out of the 59 seats it contested in 2009 in the Telangana region alone. Crying over the spilt milk, Naidu went on blaming almost all the partners, aside from opponents like Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam Party and the Lok Satha for queering the pitch and spoiling his chances of returning to power. Soon after losing the elections, Naidu had declared the BJP untouchable and vowed that he would never align with communal forces. After a decade of being battered in the electoral domain, Naidu began tapering off his criticism of the BJP, which eventually culminated in an alliance. The TDP leaders and cadre are hoping for some tangible benefits at least in the Seemaandhra region. However, they are not very happy with being arm-twisted so much by what they clearly see as a junior partner. The TDP in fact gave only 24 Assembly seats to the BJP in 1999 (of which, the BJP won 12 in both regions together) and eight Lok Sabha seats (the BJP won 7). This time, they have given away 47 Assembly seats in Telangana and 15 in Andhra Pradesh; and 8 Lok Sabha seats in Telangana and five in Andhra Pradesh. The TDP leaders have grudgingly accepted the whopping number of seats conceded to the BJP, given that the upcoming election is a do-or-die battle for the party, which is up against some serious odds. Unlike the Congress and YSR Congress, the TDP is caught in a piquant situation as it has been claiming that it is present in both regions, instead of staying focused in only region. No sooner had N Chandrababu Naidu brought down the curtains to the suspense thriller of the pre-poll alliance between his Telugu Desam Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party, die-hard TDP worker and Medak MLA Mynampalli Hanmanth Rao resigned after the TDP gave the BJP a seat that he has been nursing to contest. He lost no time in meeting Digvijaya Singh to explore his future prospects.As he could not find solace there, he joined the TRS. This cannot be brushed aside just as an isolated incident. Telugu Desam leaders feel that the vote transfer at the grassroots level will not happen in the seats wherever the BJP is contesting. Foreseeing a possible fusion between the two parties, several TDP leaders had crossed to the TRS well in advance. The TDP-BJP combo will now lock horns with the YSRC in Seemaandhra, while the Congress would fight the TRS in Telangana.