Former Vice President of India M Venkaiah Naidu is generally considered to be a supporter of Telugu Desam Party president and former Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu.
Reason: Both of them belong to the same community and when Venkaiah was playing a key role at the Centre, both of them had very good relations.
In fact, there was an allegation that it was because of his close relationship with Naidu that the BJP did not grow into a major force in Andhra Pradesh.
But after Venkaiah’s retirement as Vice President of India, there seems to be some gap between him and Naidu.
There were no occasions when both of them had met, though there was a talk that Venkaiah could be an indirect advisor to Naidu post retirement.
However, Venkaiah has been surprising making critical comments against Naidu now and then, albeit indirectly.
On Saturday, too, the former Vice President made certain interesting comments that sounded harsh to Naidu.
Taking part in the centenary celebrations of NTR at Tenali, Venkaiah said NTR was a spotless personality with no ill-will against anybody.
“He was very innocent and used to believe everybody easily. That is why people whom he had believed blindly had betrayed him,” he said.
Stating that NTR could not smell the conspiracies and scheming by his own people, Venkaiah said it was because of his blind belief in them, he was backstabbed in politics and could not recover.
Though he did not explicitly say who those backstabbers were, definitely, his comments were aimed at Naidu, who is still facing the stigma of ditching his own father-in-law.
Describing NTR as a revolutionary in Andhra politics, Venkaiah said the former chief minister had introduced several schemes for the welfare of the poor.
“He was instrumental in political empowerment of women and financial empowerment of weaker sections,” he said.
