Telugu Desam Party: Fighting For Existence
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
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By Sunil Garodia
About the Author
Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.
View all posts by this Author
The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) has suffered a huge crisis even as Chandrababu Naidu is holidaying with family in Europe. Four of its Rajya Sabha MPs (out of the total six in the upper house) left to form a separate group. They later joined the BJP.
Y S Chowdary alias Sujana
Chowdary, T G Venkatesh, C M Ramesh and Garikapati Mohan Rao, the four MPs met the chairman of the House Venkaiah Naidu and informed him of their decision. They
refuted the allegation that they left the party in the lurch although the
president was not in the country. YS Choudhary said that they had met
Chandrababu and informed him of their decision to quit about a week ago.
With this, the TDP is facing
an existential crisis. The party was vanquished in the assembly elections,
winning just 23 seats in the 175-member house. It won just 3 Lok Sabha seats.
Now with 4 Rajya Sabha MPs quitting, the party is left with three in the Lok
Sabha and 2 in the Rajya Sabha. The ground report is also disheartening. The
cadre is disillusioned and peopleâs support is vanishing fast. Chandrababu
Naidu also seems to have taken a long break to marshall his resources and think
about his next course of action.
But political analyst Sriram
Karri is of the opinion that nothing short of a change in the top leadership
will revive the party. Karri says that Naidu should resign and a non-Kamma be
handed over the leadership of the party. Otherwise, he says, the party will
lose its relevance and its existence will be threatened.
These are hard days for Naidu who, till the beginning of the general elections, was crisscrossing the country and meeting all opposition leaders to bring about unity in the ranks. Little did he know that after the results were out, he would lose all clout and will face the worst political crisis of his life. If he does not act urgently and with sagacity, he will be left to preside over the death of a political force that ruled undivided Andhra for long and with great success.
