Sujana maintains marked silence

​Hyderabad: Why is former Union minister Sujana Chowdary cooling off at a time when his Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha colleagues are stepping up the fight against the Centre, tarring the NDA dispensation with a coloured brush that it is haughty and supercilious, oblivious to the needs of Andhra Pradesh which has been crying for the Special Category Status and other benefits?

Immediately after Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu recalled him and P Ashok Gajapati Raju from the Central cabinet, miffed with the Centre adopting a step-motherly attitude towards the state, Sujana Chowdary was in the vanguard in attacking the Centre for throwing the state's interests by the wayside, unmindful of how much it hurt the sentiments of the people. He, in fact, targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the Centre going back on the promises made to the state.

Then slowly, Sujana Chowdary's "righteous" indignation tapered off and the incident where he was seen closeted with Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitely in the lobbies of Parliament raised heckles of the Opposition and eyebrows within Telugu Desam Party so much so that Chandrababu Naidu had to rap him on the knuckles for moving close to one whom the state was painting as the villain to development initiatives. Fortunately, the allegation that YSRCP leader Vijaysai Reddy fell on Modi’s feet pushed Sujana’s issue into background.

Even Finance Minister Yanamala Ramakrishndu advised the MP against moving shoulder to shoulder with Arun Jaitley since there was no bonhomie with the Centre anymore, which in fact had ruffled his feathers. Naidu as an afterthought said that there was nothing wrong in wishing a central minister if one bumps into him in the lobbies but spending time and discussing issues would send a wrong message to the people.

Telugu Desam sources said that though the TDP is out of the Central cabinet, they cannot straight away make long faces or scowl at the Union ministers when they see them in the lobbies as they had been their colleagues for more than three and half years. "This apart, they were part of the government and were involved in decision making and suddenly if they are required to attack the government, it might be a little embarrassing, but they were doing quite a good job in cornering the Centre," the Telugu Desam source said.

In fact, Sujana Chowdary had played a crucial role in holding talks with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on several occasions and conveyed the view point of the state at every turn during the course of finalisation of special package, took part in several meetings on evolving funding patterns for Polavaram project and so on. In fact, Sujana has become the point man for Chandrabbau Naidu since Ashok Gajapati Raju, though a senior leader is not of the mettle of acting as a go-in-between.

But of late, Sujana seems be going a little soft. His detractors say that as Sujana is basically an industrialist, he would have some kind of working relationship going with the Centre. Over a period of time, he has become friends with a number of BJP leaders in the nation's capital and severing the umbilical cord all of a sudden may not be that easy.

The Opposition party leaders see more to it than what meets the eye. They raise the issue of how his group firm Sujana Universal Industries' step-down subsidiary had turned into a defaulter of Rs 192 crore that it had availed from Mauritius Commercial Bank which filed a case in the court. Though Sujana said he had nothing to do with it, the fact remians that the Sujana Industry's step-down subsidiary took the loan for which he stood as guarantor.

Regardless of what would be the outcome of the court proceedings, the loan default case which hit headlines in 2016 itself dented his image and Naidu had to do a lot of hard thinking on whether to renominate him to Rajya Sabha or not but finally he did, as other factors like Sujana's financial muscle reportedly played out in his favour. In fact, the loan default case broke out in 2014 itself after he became the Union minister of state.

When the case broke out, TDP leaders, in an attempt to take the sting out of the case, made comparisons with more serious cases filed against YS Jagan Mohan Reddy but the YSRC hit back saying that the charges against their leader were made by politicians but the bank default case against Chowdary was filed by the bank itself and therefore the charges were more credible.

"Sujana Chowdary would now have to decide as to how he can come out of the shadows of the NDA fully as any absence in this effort would only affect the TDP's ongoing struggle against the Centre," said one political analyst in Vijayawada.