Spotlight

New Delhi, 11 April 2007

TDP FACES MAJOR POLITICAL CRISIS

HYDERABAD, April 12 (INFA): Twentyfive-year-old Telugu Desam Party (TDP) once a powerful regional party in the South with strong Delhi links, is slated to meet at Tirupati during the last week of May to do some heart searching and decide its future course of action. It is now facing a major political crisis.

The Party in this silver jubilee year is facing the second biggest crisis in its political history.  It can no longer confidently harp on the united Andhra slogan because of Telangana leaders in the party.  It has lost its populist image, thanks to the accent on economic reforms and is as yet unable to balance the old guard with new leaders.

Moreover, it has inherited all the bad habit of its rival Congress, including individual-centric functioning, group rivalries, corruption and open defiance of party leadership for seats during elections. Its future depends on how Party Chief Chandrababu Naidu sorts out these problems in the coming days.

The TDP, it be recalled, had heralded a new era in State politics by defeating the Congress and coming to power in the 1983 Assembly elections just nine months after its formation.  But 25 years down the line, the TDP seems to have lost its distinct character and has to depend on anti-incumbency to regain power. It seems to have no heart-warming slogans.

Ironically, it can’t even speak out on unified Andhra on which the very political future of Naidu depend. Party leaders from Telangana have been openly making move in support of a separate Telangana, much to his embarrassment. “The party remaining as one unit depends on the ability of Naidu to solve the crisis, the second he is facing after dethroning party founder N.T. Rama Rao,” says a senior party leader said recently.

Most leaders feel that the sole way for the Party to avoid a major crisis is to win the 2009 elections.  It has been an eventful journey for the TDP ever since popular cine hero N.T. Rama Rao launched it on March, 29, 1982.  Nine months later, the TDP put an end to the Congress rule in the State for the first time.

People’s resentment towards the Congress and NTR’s populist schemes, such as “1 kg rice for Rs. 2”, did the trick. NTR was successful in making the voice of Telugus at the national corridors of power. “For the first time, North Indians could differentiate between Tamil and Telugus rightly,” said Gyanpeeth awardee C. Narayana Reddy. “They realized that all southerners are not Madrasis.”

He also took initiative to bring all the Opposition together through this cost him his Chief Ministership in a coup orchestrated by Bhaskar Rao with the blessings of the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi on August, 16, 1984.

But the overwhelming public support reinstated him as Chief Minister and also helped the Party win the highest number of seats in the Lok Sabha polls after Indira Gandhi’s assassination.  Subsequently in 1989, NTR was instrumental in installing the National Front Government at the Centre.  However, the TDP lost power in 1989 because of the failure of some populist schemes.

It had also antagonized two strong communities---the Reddys and the Kapus. Five years later, NTR with his promise to implement total prohibition, came to power again. But he was unseated by Naidu in the infamous August, 1995 coup.

Naidu escaped the stigma of being a back-stabber by winning the 1999 elections, though his critics said he merely rode piggyback on the Vajpayee wave in the post-Kargil euphoria.