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Journalism of Courage
Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy and N Chandrababu Naidu now share a common link. Both Andhra Pradesh’s Chief Minister and Leader of Opposition have been arrested on corruption charges — the latter early on Saturday morning in the multi-crore AP Skill Development Corporation scam, while Jagan spent over a year-and-a-half in prison after the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested him on May 27, 2012, for allegedly amassing wealth through embezzlement.
Naidu’s arrest — seen by his party as Jagan’s vendetta politics — comes at a time when his Telugu Desam Party (TDP) is struggling against the popular administration of the CM’s Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) and is trying to stitch up an alliance with the BJP and the Jana Sena Party of Pawan Kalyan. The YSRCP swept the 2019 Assembly elections, winning 151 of the 175 seats with a vote share of 49.95% while the TDP managed to win 23 constituencies and its vote share fell to 39%. When Jagan last August visited Naidu’s bastion Kuppam — the Opposition leader has contested and won from there since 1989 — he told YSRCP leaders that the 2024 poll battle would begin with a plan to defeat Naidu on his turf and that the party would win all 175 seats, decimating the TDP in the process. Jagan’s confidence also emanated from the fact that in 2019, for the first time, Naidu’s vote share in Kuppam fell below 60% to 55.18% as the Jana Sena and the BJP split the votes.
At a recent public meeting, Naidu referred to YSRCP leaders’ allegations of insider trading against him and said he was able to sleep well at night as he had not done anything wrong. In June 2019, the Jagan government tried to demolish a riverside house in Undavalli in Amaravati that Naidu had taken on rent. The AP Capital Region Development Authority (APCRDA) issued a notice to the bungalow’s owner Ramesh Lingamaneni, asking him why the illegally constructed portions of the house should not be demolished. Since then Naidu has been mostly living at his home in Hyderabad. The Jagan government has also scuttled Naidu’s dream of constructing a modern capital city in Amaravati. Instead, the CM has proposed decentralised development, with Amaravati as the legislative capital, Visakhapatnam as the executive capital, and Kurnool as the judicial capital.
Naidu started his political career with the Congress and was elected to the Assembly for the first time in 1978 from Chandragiri constituency. He became the Cinematography Minister in the T Anjaiah government and it was at this time that he met actor N T Rama Rao, popularly known as NTR. In 1980, Naidu married NTR’s daughter Bhuvaneshwari and in March 1982 NTR founded the TDP and stormed to power in the Assembly elections. Naidu, however, lost from Chandragiri to the TDP candidate.
Subsequently, he joined his father-in-law’s party but did not contest in 1985, preferring to work for the outfit. In 1989, he contested from Kuppam for the first time and won. He has represented the constituency since then. Towards the end of August 1995, extreme discontent started brewing against NTR as TDP legislators felt that the party and government were being run by his wife Laxmi Parvati whom he had married in 1993. A group of MLAs led by Naidu rebelled and removed NTR in a coup and the Kuppam MLA replaced his father-in-law as CM.
Seen as a CM trying to boost the modernisation of technology and infrastructure, Naidu received a second term in power in 1999 as the TDP swept the elections, winning 185 of 294 Assembly seats and 29 of 42 Lok Sabha constituencies. The TDP became the second-largest party in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that formed the government at the Centre.
But the threats to his hold on power had not disappeared — both from his political rivals and those outside the system. On October 1, 2003, Naidu miraculously survived a landmine blast triggered by the People’s War Group near the Alipiri tollgate in Tirupati. The first CM to have been targeted by Maoists, he was on his way to the Tirumala temple when the attack occurred. The following year, the TDP government failed to overcome anti-incumbency as the Congress swept to power on the back of the rise of Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, Jagan’s father who was popularly known as YSR.
The TDP failed to take back power five years later too as YSR’s social welfare schemes proved to be successful. But following YSR’s demise in a chopper crash in September 2009, the TDP sensed a comeback opportunity. Jagan, meanwhile, isolated in the Congress quit the party to launch the YSRCP in 2009. The Telangana movement and the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in 2014 decimated the Congress in the state but Jagan and YSRCP emerged as Naidu’s biggest challengers. The TDP barely managed to win the elections with a difference of less than one per cent in the vote share giving Naidu this third term in power.
The TDP chief then embarked on a quest to build his dream capital city but it got stalled for a lack of funds and because it became apparent that Jagan, who went on a statewide padayatra, would win the 2019 elections. The TDP’s tally fell to just 23 seats in the 2019 polls and since then it has been a battle for the former CM to stay politically relevant. Last year, Naidu named his son Lokesh Naidu as party general secretary. Though Lokesh was not officially named as his successor, the former CM thrust him to the forefront of party leadership, a move endorsed by several senior leaders. Taking a leaf out of his rival’s book, Lokesh started on a Yuva Galam (youths’ voice) padayatra to connect with the electorate but his father’s arrest will have thrown a spanner in the works.
Last November, the desperation to return to power was apparent in his public appeal at a meeting in Kurnool where he told the audience that the 2024 polls would be his last if the TDP did not return to power. A streak of defiance marked his statement following his arrest in Nandyal. Naidu said his political rivals had tried to frame him in several cases in the past but he had always emerged unscathed.
“No force can stop me. For the past 45 years, I have selflessly served the Telugu people. I am prepared to sacrifice my life to safeguard the interests of Telugu people. No force can stop me from serving my people,’’ Naidu said. For a man who survived a landmine blast and political machinations over a four-decade career, this perhaps is the toughest test yet of his ability to ensure his own political survival and that of his party.
