Andhra: Delhi’s hand of friendship and poll arithmetic drives zero-chemistry Naidu-BJP alliance

Prime Minister Narendra Modi (right) with ex-Andhra Pradesh CM N Chandrababu Naidu in New Delhi. (SOurce: PTI Photo/File)

For TDP supremo and former Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, who sees an opportunity in every threat, the alliance he has stitched with BJP and the Jana Sena Party of actor Pawan Kalyan is certain to raise his hopes. But, the alliance that became a reality after two rounds of hardball negotiations between Naidu and the BJP top brass comes with both opportunity and threat attached to it.

Naidu has been in the wilderness after the severe drubbing at the hands of his YSR Congress rival Jaganmohan Reddy in the general elections in 2019. He is hoping for a united fight against the ruling establishment, and aiming against a split in the opposition vote.

The Arithmetic

The 2019 TDP defeat came with a huge gap in vote share. The YSR Congress polled 49.89 percent against the TDP’s 40.19 percent. The BJP and the Jana Sena had fought that election separately and their cumulative vote share was 6.98 percent. Naidu has realised that if it had been a united fight and he had combined with these two parties, his voteshare would have crossed 47 percent and the defeat would not have been so ignominious.

Naidu also attributed his 2019 defeat to his breakup with the NDA as it helped Jagan get close to Prime Minister Modi and deploy an effective election campaign, with the (implicit) help of the NDA government.

The TDP leader is now replicating the alliance that helped him ride to power in 2014 as the first Chief Minister of post-bifurcation Andhra Pradesh in 2014 after a 10-year long spell in opposition. The company of Modi and Kalyan had helped him immensely then.

It has been downhill for him ever since the parting of ways with the BJP and the Jana Sena. Currently, he is heavily banking on anti-incumbency triggered by the acts of omission and commission during Jagan’s five-year rule.

But the front, stitched up just before the elections, without ironing out hostilities running deep down the line among the alliance partners, faces a grave threat.The transfer of votes from one partner to the other cannot be guaranteed by any of the parties.

Challenges Aplenty

The couple of past instances where TDP was a major partner in the grand alliances in 2009 and 2018 revealed a similar phenomenon with poor prospects of vote transfer. The two experiments ended in fiasco to the advantage of those in power – YS Rajasekhara Reddy of the Congress in 2009 and K. Chandrashekar Rao of the TRS in 2018.

For the 2024 general elections, TDP has given away six Lok Sabha and 10 assembly seats to the BJP, and two Lok Sabha and 21 assembly seats to the Jana Sena. Naidu’s party will field its candidates in 17 Lok Sabha and 144 assembly seats. Given the poor organisational structure and vote base of the two smaller parties, the alliance partners are apparently more of a liability than an asset for Naidu.

This becomes evident going by past record. In 2019, Jana Sena won just a single seat though it put up candidates in 140 seats. The BJP which contested on all the assembly and Parliament seats then failed to secure more votes than those polled under NOTA. If that is the case yet again, the alliance may only turn out to be self-defeating for Naidu, and to the benefit of his arch-rival Jagan Mohan Reddy.

Moreover, the alliance is unlikely to go down well with Andhra voters. The central government has not really distinguished itself with a positive stance on major state-specific policy issues. Naidu had broken with BJP in his last term over the special status that was promised to the state during reorganisation. Nor has there been any succour from the Centre on other matters important to Andhra like the Polavaram irrigation project; Naidu’s attempt to build a modernistic capital in Amaravati; a railway zone for Visakhapatnam, or the privatisation move of the Visakhapatnam steel plant.

Naidu’s U-turn on the question of special status for Andhra Pradesh and lack of consistency with regard to retaining allies raises serious questions about his political credibility. Chandrababu forged an alliance with the BJP under the leadership of Atal Behari Vajpayee for the first time in 1999 after he took over reins from his mentor NT Rama Rao and broke away with the saffron party in 2004 to align with the Left parties. He again returned to BJP led by Modi in 2014 only to break up with it in 2018, and stitch an alliance with Congress in Telangana the same year.

Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy is basking in rival Naidu’s blunders. Jagan hopes his welfare politics will work like a Brahmastra to decimate his rivals. He is confident of staging a comeback with his strong social base that consists of Muslim and Christian minorities and Dalits. Jagan, meanwhile, has fashioned a war cry Siddham (“I Am Ready”) as a response to the formation of the Naidu-led opposition front.

Gali Nagaraja is a senior journalist, formerly associated with The Hindu, The Times of India, and Hindustan Times for over three decades. Views are personal, and do not represent the stance of this publication.