Chandrababu Naidu swings into poll mode

Amaravati: After smelling early elections in November-December, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu has decided to make most of the available time by kickstarting his election campaign from July 16, the day when he would be completing 1,500 days in office.

On that day, Naidu would take part in a massive public meeting and also interact with people in Grama Darshini, but the TDP high command is yet to decide where this event would take place.

“There is still time. We will soon finalise where the first meeting would be,” a party leader said after a discussion on the proposal at the party coordination committee meeting held at Naidu’s Undavalli residence here on Tuesday.

Already, the Telugu Desam Party has worked up election frenzy in the state with Naidu and his party leaders either addressing public meetings or organising protests against the BJP for the raw deal it had meted out to the state after the bifurcation in 2014.

Though Grama Darsini programmes have been going on in the state, they would be in much more orderly fashion from July 16. The coordination committee of the party has directed all the leaders of the party to take a plunge into the Gram Darshini programmes in their home constituencies as this was the only way they could connect with people and make sure that they would have a sense of belonging to the Telugu Desam Party.  

Naidu wants the people of the state to feel as though the party and the government belongs to them so that he could be assured of their support at the time of hustings. Naidu wants Grama Darshini programmes to go on without any interruption till January 10 next year by which time he hopes the elections would be over.

Naidu has mandated his leaders to organise at least 75 Grama Darshini programmes in the next four months. He wants the leaders to explain to the people what the TDP government had so far done for them and what it intends to if it is elected to power once again. 

The MLAs and party leaders would also elicit their opinion on the performance of the party and the government so far and take their suggestions for improvement of services to people further. He wants all the MLAs to visit each and every house in the villages to establish a “Telugu Desam-connect” with the people.

During the interaction with the party leaders at the coordination committee meeting, Naidu utilised the occasion to slam the Centre and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for supporting YSRC leaders who are key accused in various cases of money laundering. 

He said Modi had supported BJP leader Gali Janardhan Reddy, who is an accused in a case of illegal iron ore mining being investigated by the CBI and gave nine Assembly tickets to him to allot them to his followers in the recently-held Karnataka Assembly elections. In AP, the BJP was supporting YSRCP president YS Jaganmohan Reddy, who is an accused in the disproportionate assets case, he pointed out.