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ELECTIONS '96

BJP trying to split Cong, TDP

Ch Sushil Rao in Hyderabad

Perhaps Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu had a premonition that his ruling Telugu Desam Party would suffer a drubbing in the Lok Sabha election. Three days before the counting began on Monday, Naidu started refusing media interviews.

And, when the media praised him for sparing the state of the anti-incumbency factor yesterday, Naidu seemed to have changed his mind.

''Call after 10 pm and I will fix an appointment,'' an official in the chief minister's office told Rediff On The NeT last afternoon. The interview never took place.

By the end of the day, the Congress had taken a clear lead over the Telugu Desam Party and Chandrababu Naidu’s worst fears came true.

Though the Congress has fallen short of its tally of 22 in the 1996 Lok Sabha election by one seat, the TDP could bag only 12 seats, conceding four seats to the Opposition. Its allies, the Communist Party of India and the Janata Dal have won two and one seats respectively.

The pre-election euphoria of TDP leaders that ''Naidu's hard work will bag them the highest number of seats'' in the state has yielded place to ''we have a lot of introspection to do''.

The results came as a surprise even for the Congress. Former minister and Congress state vice-president D K Samarasimha Reddy told Rediff On The NeT, ''We were expecting to win at least 30 seats. Though the people were disllussioned with the TDP and there was a strong anti-establishment wave, the chief minister used both money and muscle power to win the election.''

Both the Congress and the TDP have suffered severe jolts, with each wresting the other's strongholds.

The TDP, which held the Anakapalle seat, received a rude shock when the Congress won the seat. The TDP avenged the defeat by snatching Parvatipuram from the Congress which pounced back by decimating the TDP in south coastal Andhra seats like Eluru, Narsapur, Machilipatnam, Narsaropet, Bapatla and Tenali.

However, the AP voters defied all poll predictions as far as the cotton growers's suicides issue is concerned. The spate of suicides by farmers in Telangana, which shook the TDP government just before the election, was expected to spell doom for the TDP in the region. But the ruling party pulled a surprise by snatching the Hanamkonda seat from the Congress while retaining the neighbouring Warangal which was the worst-affected district as far as cotton growers are concerned.

Former Union minister G Venkataswamy, who claimed his victory was a foregone conclusion, has been humbled in the Peddapalli constituency.

The BJP's Gaddam Atmacharan Reddy, who had joined the saffron brigade after the Congress denied him a ticket, went all out to retain his Nizamabad seat. But lost to the TDP's K Ganga Reddy.

However, his party made major gains in the state, with the saffron brigade winning the Karimnagar, Kakinada, Rajahmundry and Secunderabad seats.

For state unit chief Bandaru Dattatreya, who lost the Secunderabad seat to the Congress’s P V Rajeshwara Rao in the 1996 election, it was a sweet revenge. ''I would not call it revenge,'' Dattatreya told Rediff On The NeT. ''It is the people's verdict. Rajeshwara Rao alienated himself from the people and he lost.''

Rajeshwara Rao, however, was too shocked to react to the development. ''People wanted a change. Moreover, the BJP's stability plank seems to have worked and the people wanted to give the BJP a chance,'' he told Rediff On The NeT.

Asked if the Sonia Gandhi factor worked for the Congress, former state minister Dr S Geeta Reddy replied in the negative. BJP vice-president Bangaru Laxman agreed. ''It only helped the party to arrest the trend of defections.''

But, with the BJP trying to engineer defections in the Congress as the saffron brigade tries to cobble together a majority at the Centre, Sonia may have to start all over again.

Laxman and former state BJP chief V Rama Rao gave clear indications of the party's strategy. ''There are people in the TDP who want to sail with us to enable the BJP to form a government. Pressure is also building on Naidu to throw his lot with the BJP,'' Laxman claimed.

V Rama Rao, however, chose to be brutally frank. ''We will split the TDP and the Congress.''

The results also shattered the Congress's facade of unity, with former chief minister Nedurmalli Janardhan Reddy blaming Congress Working Committee member Kotla Vijayabhaskara Reddy and Congress president Sitaram Kesri for the Congress's 'poor show' in the state. ''The ticket distribution was not done properly,'' he said.

Elections '98

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