When the head of a political party is out of action for any reason, it is the responsibility of any of the family members of the party chief to take reins and lead the party from the front.
Otherwise, there should be a second-rung leadership which should take the responsibility of running the party activities as usual, without giving rise to any impression that the party has become rudderless and inactive without the leader.
Remember when YSR Congress party president Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy was in jail for 16 months in connection with the alleged quid pro quo cases, his family members – mother Y S Vijayalakshmi and sister Y S Sharmila, sustained the tempo by taking up state-wide tours.
In fact, those days, the YSRCP was in a state of deep crisis – Jagan was being subject to witch-hunt by the Congress top leadership; the CBI and Enforcement Directorate attaching all his properties and there was none to take care of the party’s organisational network.
His second-in-command V Vijay Sai Reddy was also in jail, the party affairs was handled by other leaders like Sajjala Ramakrishna Reddy and others who had little experience in politics.
Yet, Jagan handled the party activities by sitting in jail and ensured that the party did not lose its momentum. It is a different matter that the YSRCP could not come to power in 2014 elections, but the party remained in tact and the efforts paid off in 2019 elections.
But the present scenario in Telugu Desam Party appears to be quite different. With party president and former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu being in jail for the last one month, the party appears to be in utter chaos.
His son and TDP general secretary Nara Lokesh, who had till then been creating a euphoria among the party cadres with his Yuva Galam padayatra, suddenly went out of action. He had gone to New Delhi and been staying there since September 14 in the name of lobbying and discussing with the legal experts.
At the same, Lokesh is also struggling to avoid being arrested by the CID authorities in one case or the other and is therefore busy filing anticipatory bail petitions in the courts.
As a result, the TDP has gone into a virtual limbo with no other leader giving any direction to the party cadre to take up any party activity. There is no other programme in the party, except protesting Naidu’s arrest and praying for his early release from jail.
Naidu’s wife Bhuvaneshwari and Lokesh’s wife Nara Brahmani have not been able to handle party and have been confined to conducting silly protests like making noise on plates and drums and lighting candles and torches etc.
TDP’s Andhra unit president K Atchannaidu or any other leader has not been able to give any direction to the party cadres. If this is the scenario in the party, one wonders how it would be able to fight the coming elections!
