BJP dismisses TDP chief’s post-mortem of poll debacle

Signalling an end to its over six-year-long honeymoon with the Telugu Desam Party, the BJP today openly disagreed with TDP chief Chandrababu...

Signalling an end to its over six-year-long honeymoon with the Telugu Desam Party, the BJP today openly disagreed with TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu’s claim that his ties with the saffron party and the Gujarat violence were responsible for the rout in Andhra, and blamed it on anti-incumbency instead.

Reacting to Chandrababu’s statement yesterday, BJP vice-president M. Venkaiah Naidu told reporters, ‘‘We do not agree with that assessment and viewpoint…Some people in our party are of the opinion that the anti-incumbency factor in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh affected our performance in the Lok Sabha elections.’’ Asserting that if Gujarat was a factor, the BJP would not have done well in states like Punjab, Orissa, Maharashtra and Karnataka, Naidu said, ‘‘We believe in the last LS polls, local issues influenced people’s minds.’’

Another BJP leader, V.K. Malhotra, was more circumspect in his criticism. Addressing the daily briefing at Parliament, Malhotra said every political party works out the pros and cons before entering into a pre-poll alliance. ‘‘Every political party has to decide its own course,’’ he said.

He pointed out that some in the BJP had wanted the party to tie up with the Telengana Rashtra Samiti and felt they had paid a price for ‘‘abandoning’’ Telengana.

Cong too slams claim

NEW DELHI

: Congress spokesperson Anand Sharma on Tuesday criticised the claim made by Naidu that his support to the BJP cost him the state in the Assembly polls. ‘‘There is no change of heart. There is rank opportunism by parties like Telugu Desam, which endorsed everything that was happening during NDA regime,’’ he said. Sharma added that Naidu’s statement indicated that the NDA was a sinking ship. ‘‘We don’t want them to sink — for the sake of democracy, we want them to survive,’’ he said.