Hedging His Bets

Out of jail, Jagan bats for a united Andhra and Modi

Sixteen months is a long time to be in jail; it can blunt the sharpest of minds. But Jaganmohan Reddy, son of former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy, who finally secured bail last week in the disproportionate assets cases he faces, has already succeeded in increasing the political temperature in a fractured state whose polity is deeply divided on the Centre’s decision to carve out a separate Telangana.

Apart from positioning himself as a votary for Samaikhya Andhra or ‘united Andhra’ at a juncture where Telangana’s creation is a mere formality by the Centre, he also set the cat among the pigeons by openly expressing admiration for Gujarat CM Narendra Modi, indicating he would not mind joining hands with him for the 2014 General Election.

“What I want Narendra Modi to do, since I appreciate him as an administrator, is change the entire system and bring every political party to the secular platform in the interest of this country.” With this, Jagan has revealed that his YSR Congress Party (YSRCP), the party he founded after breaking away from the Congress, has several alliance options for the General Election as well as AP Assembly polls, expected to be held simultaneously.

The YSRCP, galvanised by Jagan’s release, has already petitioned the Governor to convene an early session to vote against the Telangana resolution being pushed by the Congress and Telangana Rashtra Samiti. The YSRCP is also organising a massive united Andhra rally in Hyderabad on 19 October, which has the support of the nearly 400,000 state non-gazetted employees who have been on strike since August in the Seemandhra region, protesting against the bifurcation.

That the Modi factor has crept into Andhra politics has clearly unnerved the Congress, which was comfortable in the thought that once Telangana was formed, the party could rely on the goodwill of the people of the new state to vote it into power and help it win at least 15 Lok Sabha seats. In 2009, of the total 42 Lok Sabha seats of Andhra Pradesh, the Congress had bagged 32. Its thinking that the TRS, at the forefront of the Telengana agitation, would merge with it has received a body blow as TRS Chief K Chandrasekhar Rao increasingly appears to be veering toward the BJP as the bifurcation is indefinitely postponed.

That Jagan has invoked Modi is significant. Since he was named the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate for 2014, Modi has not been able to get such open support from any regional party or former ally so far, even losing long term ally Janata Dal United.

When the Gujarat CM addressed a rally in Hyderabad in September, he paid rich tributes to thespian and TDP founder NT Rama Rao, who gave AP its first non-Congress government riding on Telugu pride. It was widely speculated that he was sending positive signals to woo NTR’s son-in-law and current TDP Chief N Chandrababu Naidu back into the NDA fold. When Naidu was CM, he had distanced himself from the BJP-led NDA, citing the 2002 Gujarat violence. Now, despite Modi being positioned as prime ministerial candidate, the TDP is slowly warming up to its former ally.

Jagan’s interest in a formation led by NDA does not come as a surprise at all, considering that three years ago he was all set to topple the Congress government in AP with the help of Gali Janardhan Reddy, Bellary’s BJP strongman and the force behind the saffron party forming its first government in the South, in Karnataka. Jagan and Reddy were business partners, too. But things did not go as he would have liked, as the Congress High Command, unable to influence him to stop his highly successful odarpu or thanksgiving yatra to visit families who lost their loved ones in shock or committed suicide at the sudden death of YSR in a copter crash, set the Income Tax department, Enforcement Directorate and CBI on Jagan in quick succession. Janardhan Reddy too was snared as his partner in crime and is still in jail. And Telangana became a full-blown crisis.

That Jagan had kept the BJP link open speaks volumes about his political thinking. Most central Congress leaders believed he is a novice, a first-time MP from Kadapa elected largely on his father’s reputation. While in jail, Jagan had toyed with the idea of the YSRCP playing a similar role to that of the Nationalist Congress Party in Maharashtra, which shares power at both the state level and the Centre. The NCP idea was floated by him in an effort to build bridges with the Congress, but once the YSRCP emerged victorious in the by-elections of June 2012, winning 15 of 18 seats, and the Congress ignored him, merging with actor Chiranjeevi’s Praja Rajyam Party instead, Jagan felt unwanted. The fact that the Congress was using the CBI to make him buckle only alienated him further, says a seasoned observer.

After his release, ruling out any pact with the Congress, Jagan said: “I am from this generation and what I want is peace and development,” which some interpret as favouring Modi. But it remains to be seen whether the BJP will readily forge a pre-poll alliance with the YSRCP, as Jagan is yet to get a clean chit from the CBI, though the agency claims it has no substantial evidence in most of the cases against Jagan it investigated.

Jagan has also decried efforts by the TDP to paint him as a Congress agent. Senior Congress leader Palvai Goverdhan Reddy is already on record saying that, given AP CM Kiran Kumar Reddy’s continued resistance to the Congress line on Telangana, the party would depend on Jagan to deliver a bloodless transfer, as he was in a better position to strike a deal on behalf of the Seeamandhra people, especially on the contentious status of Hyderabad.

As things stand in Seemandhra, the YSRCP has successfully eaten into the Congress vote, reason enough for Kiran Kumar Reddy to oppose the creation of Telangana and salvage the situation. But the Congress leadership is in no mood to listen and has its own set of beliefs on how the dice will roll.

Andhra PradeshJaganmohan ReddyNarendra Modi