Will the upcoming Telangana elections catalyse a BJP-TDP alliance?

On June 3, Chandrababu Naidu received a call for a meeting with Amit Shah and BJP president JP Nadda ahead of the state elections in Telangana, lending credence to the talk of a reunion between the estranged ex-partners. (File image)

On February 10, 2019, some time after breaking ties with NDA, Telugu Desam Party supremo and then Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu launched into a personal attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi at an election rally in Vijayawada, saying Modi didn’t have any respect for the family system.

Five days before his outburst, Amit Shah, who was then the Bharatiya Janata Party president, had categorically made it clear that NDA’s doors for Naidu remained permanently shut. Now four years later, on June 3, Naidu received a call for a meeting with Amit Shah and BJP president JP Nadda ahead of the state elections in Telangana, lending credence to the talk of a reunion between the estranged ex-partners.

The BJP, under the spell of the Modi magic, had believed that Naidu would no longer be an ally worth leaning on after he bit the dust in the 2019 assembly election. But now the BJP’s state unit in Telangana is finding the going tough after the Karnataka polls, forcing it to scout for whatever support comes its way to stay relevant in the state.

After his defeat in 2019, Naidu has come to believe that BJP’s backing is vital for him to return to power in Andhra. He started extending the olive branch to the BJP some years ago itself, saying breaking the alliance with the NDA was his historical blunder. In doing so, Naidu aims to kill two birds with one stone: one, receiving logistic support from the ruling NDA to ensure poll management in his party’s favour, and secondly isolating his YSR Congress bete noire and Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy from the NDA.

But the question remains whether the BJP top brass will choose to forget all of Naidu’s past deeds and prefer him over Jagan. In fact, Jagan is more loyal and trusted by the NDA than Naidu in backing the NDA government’s every decision. The BJP’s support to TDP means helping Naidu become Chief Minister at the expense of Jagan Reddy. Will the BJP go to that extent, though film actor Pawan Kalyan, leader of Jana Sena and a BJP ally, is clamouring for reunification of all three former allies to send Jagan packing? But what is certain is that BJP won’t be in a hurry to abandon Jagan.

Unlike in Andhra where it is a marginal presence, BJP is considered to be one of the power players in Telangana. The previous national elections  in 2019 and subsequent bypolls at Dubak and Huzurabad suggested that BJP was TRS’s main rival. But the saffron party has little presence in south Telangana, which accounts for 58 out of 119 assembly segments. The TDP, in case of an alliance, will help the BJP to project itself as a party having a pan-Telangana presence.

Though the TDP suffers existential issues in Telangana after the state bifurcation, it still has substantial cadres and voters in 20-25 assembly segments spread over Khammam, Nalgonda and Rangareddy districts and in and around the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC).

In 2014, the year of undivided Andhra Pradesh’s bifurcation, the alliance of the TDP and BJP had put up a good show in Telangana, weathering strong regional sentiment. Both the parties in alliance secured 20 seats, a third of the TRS tally then.

The BJP is now in a bind over the morale of its ranks and keeping its flock together following strong headwinds from Karnataka. The party leadership had intended to strengthen BJP by poaching potential leaders from Congress and TRS (now BRS). The BJP has even constituted a wing named “Cherikala (admissions) Committee” headed by its senior leader Etela Rajendar.

The committee is failing to attract any leader worth naming yet. Instead, the turncoats who earlier defected from rival parties are apparently looking for greener pastures elsewhere after the hopes of BJP coming to power receded. This is forcing the BJP to project strong optics again with the help of TDP, so that it can forge a winning front against the KCR government.

The break-up between TDP and BJP in 2018 had made way for rancour and animosities in both the parties. Naidu’s treatment of PM Modi after the 2002 communal riots in Gujarat is still remembered by the BJP rank and file. They had even celebrated Naidu’s poll debacle. Now is the wheel turning full circle again?