The Rift within the TDP

NTR’s sons look to challenge the Naidu family’s reign

HYDERABAD  ~ Some major churning is expected to take place in the Telugu Desam Party, founded by the late superstar and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister NT Rama Rao, as it gathers this week for its annual Mahanadu convention and the celebrations of its 30th anniversary. The TDP, out of power for the second term in a row, is going through a turbulent phase with party supremo Nara Chandrababu Naidu undecided on the Telangana issue and deepening fissures between the two families that control the party.

On the cusp of handing over power to the next generation of the Nara and Nandamuri branches that signify Naidu’s and NTR’s progeny, respectively, the TDP is increasingly looking like the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) in Tamil Nadu where a full-blown family succession war catalysed its decimation in the recent Assembly polls.

Naidu, NTR’s son-in-law, who replaced the ailing CM in a coup in 1995, has been the unquestioned leader so far. But, ever since the Telangana agitation was revived in 2009, Naidu’s iron grip over the party has loosened. Senior leaders are questioning his ambivalent stand on the issue. Nagam Janardhana Reddy, a five-time MLA is expected to be suspended this week for daring to question Naidu for keeping the T question in the balance. Talk of this proposed action has already led to two other regional MLAs openly declaring that TDP legislators of the region would meet soon to decide on their future course of action.

Naidu and the TDP, despite the party’s supporters in the region keen to back the movement, would not want to antagonise the party’s larger support base in the coastal and Rayalaseema regions of the state that wants a unified Andhra. For the record, however, the TDP has a Telangana Telugu Desam Forum.

The party’s approach of Telangana and coastal Andhra being two eyes of the same Telugu thalli (mother) has few takers. A two-time CM once globally admired as AP’s chief executive officer, Naidu had to face  a complete rout in 12 Telangana Assembly bypolls a few months ago. Senior leaders admitted then that people in the Telangana region want nothing short of a separate state.

This week’s Mahanadu is expected to pay lip service at least to the tricky issue. The Telangana Rashtra Samiti, after all, has been resurrected on the basis of this single issue, as has its erstwhile NDA partner, the BJP.

The TDP is also facing an intense power struggle as the NTR family, the Nandamuri faction, wants a bigger slice of power especially as Naidu’s son Nara Lokesh is set to inherit the crown. NTR’s son Harikrishna has begun to articulate the Nandamuri faction’s cause, and took Naidu by surprise recently, writing an ‘open letter’ designating himself as a fighter of corruption, even as Naidu announced a walkathon in support of a fasting Anna Hazare.

Harikrishna, a Rajya Sabha member, in his letter said NTR was the greatest corruption-buster and anointed himself as the sole protector of his father’s ideals. Though TDP leaders dismissed Harikrishna’s move as a ‘storm in a tea cup’, no one missed the point that he was aiming for a larger role for his son. Lokesh, on the other hand,  heads the Nara family’s business. Interestingly, Lokesh is married to Balakrishna’s daughter, Brahmani, not an usual situation in the state.

Party leaders, however, blame the Congress for trying to exploit the rift in the TDP after it succeeded in diluting the Chiranjeevi-led Praja Rajyam Party and strategically silenced the TRS. They point to Union minister of State for HRD and elder daughter of NTR, D Purandeshwari, who successfully led her family to unveil an NTR statue on a day that the TDP celebrates as the party founder’s day. Her brothers Harikrishna, Balakrishna and actor Junior NTR (as Harikrishna’s son is popularly known) walked out of a TDP event to be at the one organised by Purandeshwari, leaving Naidu to fend questions from MLAs on whether it would be wise to continue at a TDP function without their founder’s family in it.

Naidu, though, denies the rift between the Nara and Nandamuri families and says such ripples are to be expected in a large party. This may not be entirely a front; it is true that Naidu has weathered some family storms. Harikrishna, who had formed his own outfit Anna TDP in 1998, had failed to enthuse voters. Before that, when NTR’s sons had supported Laxmi Parvathi, the late CM’s second wife who formed TDP-LP, they were forced to come back into the TDP fold. “If they had talent, other than appearing before cameras with gaudy make-up and wigs, I would have not lasted even a day in the TDP, as NTR would have definitely promoted his sons,’’ he recently told party loyalists.

But perhaps it is now that Naidu opens his eyes to today’s realities rather than keep up a (former PM) Narasimha Rao-style-pretence where even not taking any decision was seen as a decision by itself. The middle path may not be the best road forward for a regional party that once was seen as the best alternative to the Congress and a major contributor to non-Congress governments at the centre.

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