I’ll decide who would be next PM

​Vijayawada: Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday trained his guns at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asking him to declare special category status for AP or face the prospect of the rout of the NDA in the next elections.

"I want you to realise that after the next general elections, I would be in a position to decide who should be the Prime Minister of the country as I would have all the 25 Lok Sabha seats in the state in my kitty," Naidu said, in a no-holds-barred attack on Modi, who is away in London attending the Commonwealth Summit in London.

Naidu wanted the Prime Minister to realise that he was senior to him in politics and that he can see through any political misadventures against him. "I am not afraid of anything. I have nothing to fear. I do not fear cases. The Centre and the state are two separate entities," he said in a high-octane offensive against him.  

Naidu, after his 12-hour-long Dharma Porata Deeksha, which became the focal point of all Telugu Desam Party activity, reminded Modi of his responsibility of redeeming the promises made to the people of the state at the time of bifurcation of the state including the promise of special category status and wanted to know why he was remaining silent in spite of the people voicing their protest.

Reiterating that nothing was more important to him than the interests of the state, Naidu recalled how he had remained determined not to assume office as Chief Minister after winning the elections in 2014 until the centre transferred the mandals to be submerged under Polavaram project to Andhra Pradesh from Telangana. "For me, the welfare of the people is important and nothing else matters," he said.

He told Modi that he supported the BJP in the last elections with the hope that the arrangement would benefit the state. “Knowing that the BJP was not interested in Andhra Pradesh and its people, we had come out of it,” he said. He also batted for stronger states which he said alone would make the Centre strong, referring to growing dissatisfaction among the southern states over the discrimination against them in allocation of funds.

He expressed his displeasure over the BJP working "collusion" with the YSRC to discredit the TDP in the Sate but warned the Centre that these tricks would not work in AP. "If you want to do Tamil Nadu type politics, you would be really very sorry in the end," he said.

Naidu defended his decision in sticking with the BJP for four years since if he did not, the state which was just divided without a capital and with no infrastructure worth the name would have suffered much more.