N Chandrababu Naidu returns as Chief Minister of a post-2014 Andhra Pradesh with a huge majority in the assembly. TDP won 135 seats, or 77% of the total, giving an indication of its dominance. Opposition to the TDP-led alliance has been reduced to just 11 of the 175 seats in the assembly.
Unlike the last occasion when BJP and TDP fought the Lok Sabha polls together, TDP has leverage in the centre because BJP fell short of a majority. It led to speculation on the compromises BJP would have to make in Union cabinet portfolio allocations. Eventually, TDP got civil aviation in the cabinet, which is a portfolio that it received even in 2014.
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Did TDP not make the most of its 16 Lok Sabha seats in negotiations?
The answer to that is cabinet portfolio allocations are the wrong measure to judge how effectively TDP has used its leverage in a coalition government. It’s very likely that Naidu didn’t push hard. That’s because the real test for him will be the concessions he extracts from NDA for AP.
Anchors don’t give up the ‘Big Four’
BJP, the anchor of the NDA coalition, was never going to part with any one of the four key ministries, home, finance, defence and external affairs. Even a weaker Congress in UPA 1 and UPA 2 kept these four ministries. It’s not realistic to expect the anchor of a coalition to give up these ministries.
DMK, the wrong benchmark
DMK’s hard bargaining during UPA years was often used as a reference point in speculation that BJP would be put under a lot of pressure in portfolio allocation. That’s the wrong example.
A regional party’s trajectory depends entirely on assembly elections. While LS elections are important, nothing tops performance in local elections. Take DMK as an example. It was a part of both the Vajpayee NDA and UPA governments. Important portfolios at the centre such as commerce and telecom did not prevent a loss in assembly elections in 2001 and 2011. Neither did an unfriendly central government prevent it from winning the 2021 assembly election in Tamil Nadu.
Cabinet positions for a regional party are certainly beneficial, but they are not critical.
AP’s special package
The National Development Council (NDC) in April 1969 for the first time introduced the idea of the Special Category Status. If a state is given that status, the amount of co-funding it has do to get the benefit of central government scheme is brought down substantially.
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One way of looking at it is that it frees a state government’s budget to channel resources into other areas. Given that it’s a concession offered to only some states, it requires political balancing on the part of the centre.
AP was promised a temporary special category status by both Congress and BJP as a way to compensate for the financial costs of the bifurcation of the erstwhile Andhra.
On July 9, 2014, the first Modi government did tell Rajya Sabha that that grant of special category status to AP is under consideration. AP didn’t get it and TDP’s subsequent rupture with BJP is now history.
Package is everything
If TDP has to retain political credibility amongst the electorate, it needs to get a meaningful special package out of the NDA. It need not be called special category status, but it has to be comparable in terms of freeing up resources in the state budget.
This is what Naidu will be judged on. In comparison, cabinet positions are relatively unimportant.
(Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.)
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