Uphill task for senior-most leader in New Year

Amaravati: No Ugadi cheers for AP Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu. The road ahead of him in Telugu New Year appears to be dark and foreboding. Having broken up with the BJP and his one-time friend Pawan Kalyan going for his jugular, no one envies Naidu's position. Opposition leader YS Jaganmohan Reddy is out on the street, baying for his blood. Monday could prove to be a very crucial day for Naidu and his party. His assertions that he is not afraid of any one may not be just a bluff since he is made of different mettle, though his detractors may have a different view.

Now that he has chosen to challenge Narendra Modi, who has emerged as some kind of a supernova with saffron upsurge in the North East as well, people are anxious to know how he is going to vanquish his new enemy. If he succeeds in getting the no-confidence motion accepted, that would be a major success feels Congress former MP Kotla Surya Prakash Reddy.

For this to happen, analysts say he should prove former Congress MP Undavalli Arun Kumar wrong who suspects that “The senior- most leader” is lately indulging in too much of self-aggrandisement which points to the fact that Naidu may be suffering from a sense of a lack of confidence in himself or some kind of insecurity. He has huge number of partymen to do that. Naidu would hit a jackpot if he takes the BJP by its horns as people are sure to rally behind him or else would go the Congress way, Arun Kumar added.

Naidu has been quite quick in scripting strategies against Jagan each time he came up with a gambit to corner him but he appears to have lost out in preventing him from turning denial of the Special Category Status to the state into an emotive issue. Naidu, like any politician, had looked for alternative strategy to arrest the march of Jagan Mohan Reddy but could not.

Later, Jagan had a head start on him by throwing up the other strategies in his repertoire - announcement of resignation of MPs after the end of the budget session and before that moving a no-confidence motion against the NDA. Before Naidu firmed up any other strategy, Jagan Mohan Reddy came out with these two plans which had emotional appeal to the people and there was nothing Naidu could do but endorse no trust motion despite the risk of an impression gaining ground that he was only following the Opposition leader.

The very fact that Naidu had support from other opposition parties for his no-confidence motion has proved one thing beyond doubt. All of them, including the Congress, were convinced that Naidu had taken a clear anti-BJP stand by coming out of the NDA and that they are equally sure that he would take the war into the enemy camp. In just few hours, Naidu could muster the support of 175 MPs from 11 non-NDA parties.

There were certain strategic mistakes that Naidu had committed during the last four years. If teaming up with BJP in 2014 was a wise decision and staying with it even more wiser as the state which was badly mauled by bifurcation was in need of support, staying too long with it even though the saffron dispensation began ignoring the state's crying needs, was very unwise, Arun Kumar felt.

During the course of his journey, Naidu appears to have overstayed with the NDA dispensation, nodding his head for special package, which turned out to be a Barmecide feast finally, in lieu of Special Category Status which had been promised but was never delivered. For two years he waited for the special status and finally in 2016 it said it was not possible and whether Naidu was game with the package which it said was as good as status, said the former MP said.

By: R Prithvi Raj