With the Telugu Desam Party Chief N Chandrababu Naidu preparing the ground to revive alliance with the BJP, his party leaders are caught in an embarrassing situation. They are now forced to retract their earlier utterances against BJP as communal party.
“We never said that BJP as a whole is a communal party,” the TDP Telangana leader Revanth Reddy said.
However, he was clearly sounding awkward while saying this because everybody knows under what circumstances did TDP walk out of the NDA.
In fact, the regional party was the first to demand dismissal of the Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi because of his alleged inaction and failure to prevent anti-Muslim violence in his state in 2002.
The TDP had in the past made strong statements condemning BJP’s communal politics and was particularly critical of the Modi government in the face of allegations that it had colluded with the rioters targeting Muslims and their properties.
The TDP politburo had passed a unanimous resolution demanding dismissal of the Modi government for communal violence in Gujarat.
After severing the seven year long alliance with the BJP soon after losing power in 2004, the TDP went for a image make-over, abandoned its reforms agenda, embraced unbridled populism and became friends with the left parties.
It contested the 2009 elections in alliance with the left parties. However, ahead of the 2014 polls, Naidu is again looking at BJP as a potential ally. He wants to piggyback on Modi to come to power in Andhra Pradesh and play a key role in national politics.
A section of the TDP leaders are unable to digest such blatant political opportunism ahead of elections.
