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Naidu-Shah meet: What’s up?
Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and BJP all-India president Amith Shah had a one-to-one meeting over lunch for 40 minutes at the former’s riverside residence on Thursday, letting the rumour mills get into overdrive weaving stories over the outcome.
Vijayawada: Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu and BJP all-India president Amith Shah had a one-to-one meeting over lunch for 40 minutes at the former’s riverside residence on Thursday, letting the rumour mills get into overdrive weaving stories over the outcome.
Before the one-to-one interaction, the CM hosted lunch with Andhra delicacies for Shah, Union Information and Broadcasting Minister M Venkaiah Naidu, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu, BJP state president Kambhampati Haribabu and AP Health Minister Kamineni Srinivas. CM’s son and IT minister Nara Lokesh, Union Science and Technology Minister YS Chowdary, TDP state president K Kala Venkata Rao also dined along with their BJP friends.
Naidu and Shaw, soon after the lunch, left for the one-to-one meeting. A huge contingent of print and electronic media personnel took positions outside the CM’s residence well before the lunch meet, weathering sweltering heat.
After having waited for more than three hours, hordes of leaders from both the camps emerged from the CM’s residence and drove away in no time, leaving the media corps, desperately looking for bites and visuals, disheartened.
The media finally had to contend with speculative stories which became feed for the politicos, friends and foes alike to feed on at the end of the day.
The rumblings from the ruling alliance made a setting for the Shah-Naidu interface which helped some news agencies comprehend its theme and outcome to flash stories. The agency reports suggested that the Presidential election and hiccups in the TDP-BJP alliance figured during the meeting.
Senior BJP leaders like former union minister Kavuri Sambhasiva Rao met Amith Shaw just before his meeting with the TDP chief and cautioned against aligning with the TDP in the wake of growing discontentment against its regime in the state. Similar noises were heard even in the TDP till Shah landed in the state.
The BJP chief during his interaction with the party rank and file after the lunch-on programme displayed subtlety vis-à-vis his party’s relations with the TDP and the performance of the latter’s government in the state. Recalling the legends that describe Vijayawada as Vijayavatika (place of victory in Telugu), Shah hopes to build his party as a contender for power in the state in near future, avoiding any overt or covert references about his ally.
The response from the Opposition parties and even from the ally Jana Sena, was obviously hostile. Jana Sena, Congress and Left parties staged protest demonstrations across the state with “Shah go back” slogans for his party’s failure to live up to its promise for special category status. Congress leaders lodged complaints of cheating in police stations against the BJP chief.
