There seems to be more to former minister and senior Telugu Desam Party legislator from Rajahmundry (Rural) Gorantla Buchaiah Chowdary’s silent revolt against the party leadership than what meets the eye.
While lack of respect in the party, importance being given to his juniors and highhanded behaviour of party general secretary Nara Lokesh are said to be the reasons for Buchaiah Chowdary’s decision to quit the party, sources said the most important reason for his disgruntlement was a dispute over monetary affairs.
During the 2019 assembly elections, several TDP leaders, including Buchaiah Chowdary, reportedly spent their personal money for the party’s campaign and the TDP leadership reportedly promised that it would compensate the losses incurred by them after the completion of election process.
But the miserable defeat of the party has demoralised the leadership so much so that it simply ignored its promise of reimbursing the expenditure spent by these senior party leaders in the elections.
Some of them managed to bring pressure on Naidu and got their money back, but soft people like Buchaiah Chowdary were completely ignored despite repeated reminders.
Though Naidu was in favour of returning the money, Lokesh firmly put his foot down and refused to return the money.
This has led to a lot of disgruntlement in the party and leaders like Buchaiah Chowdary are now being forced to come out.
Added to this disgruntlement over money matters, the senior MLA was also upset with the way Lokesh was encouraging juniors like Adireddy Bhavani in Rajahmundry, ignoring a senior like him.
When Buchaiah Chowdary fired the salvo at the party leadership saying he would quit the party soon, Naidu realised the damage it could cause to the party in East Godavari. He spoke to the senior leader over phone and tried to pacify him.
He also sent senior leaders party leaders like Nimmakayala Chinna Rajappa and N Ramakrishna Reddy to Buchaiah Chowdary for talks, besides asking TDP state president K Atchannaidu to cool down the MLA. But Chowdary was unrelenting.
He conveyed to Naidu through the negotiators that he wanted his money back and that he should be given due recognition in the party.
