Notwithstanding Chandrababu Naidu’s bragging that he stands tall on a high moral pedestal, the machinations of the Machiavellian politics of the Telugu Desam Party president have taken a drubbing for once in the selection of Rajya Sabha nominees.
The supercilious announcement that “I would take a call using my experience” on fielding a fourth candidate from the ruling TDP-BJP combine somehow has fallen flat on the face of the Chief Minister.
He wanted the “migratory birds” – the MLAs who crossed over from the YSR Congress to the TDP for no substantive reason – to decide on fielding a fourth candidate by indulging in horse trading. However, they found themselves lost in the mess of choosing candidates. For, the divide-and-rule logic Naidu deftly adopts at every stage came forth in its ugliest form when he called only them for a meeting on Monday.
Later, the onus of whether or not to field a fourth candidate is left on their shoulders, cornering them as to how many MLAs can each one of them scoop out in the last minute from the YSR Congress. Though most of the “migrated MLAs” actually belong to the TDP school of thought and are well aware of the maneuvers of Naidu, they were subjected to a fresh bout of humiliation. They were indeed isolated.
The pro-Telugu Desam social media bleaters may pour scorn and support all the imprudence of their leader, dubbing it as a denouement of his political astuteness. So what? The truth is otherwise.
The BJP, which almost snubbed Naidu by transferring Nirmala Seetharaman to Karnataka, did reap a surprise benefit of arm-twisting. When Naidu announced during his recent Delhi visit that there was no proposal from the BJP seeking the TDP’s support in the Rajya Sabha elections, the BJP indeed felt irked. With a view to sending across a strong message, it even shifted Chandrababu Naidu’s BFF (best friend forever), Venkaiah Naidu, who heaps encomiums on the Chief Minister at the drop of a hat, to Rajasthan from Karnataka, without giving a scope for the TDP to think that it was the benefactor of the BJP.
Some analysts are under the impression that realizing the potential danger of snapping connections with the BJP, especially when the relations are on the rocks and his chips down, Naidu pulled all the stops and got the BJP around by “offering on a golden platter” a seat to Rajya Sabha. Getting the Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu to contest from AP is a surprise. Whether it is a boon or a bane will become clear over a period of time.
The media which did not want Union Minister of State Y S Chowdary to be renominated had an egg on its face. Surreptitious attempts of some media owners – we can’t call them moguls, considering their puny stature – to influence Naidu to endow them with a Rajya Sabha seat, however, went straight into the garbage bin.
That whether the BJP advised the TDP not to field a fourth candidate with a fear that its nominee might fall short of the necessary votes or not, the TDP itself realized that it would have to face a terrible embarrassment, just in case its scheme recoils. Thus the media buzz ended in a hiss or a whimper.
Rajya Sabha nominations ended and two TDP nominees – TG Venkatesh being the other, a BJP nominee and one candidate of YSR Congress, V Vijaya Sai Reddy, will be elected unopposed to the Upper House.
If any of the migratory YSR Congress MLAs take the insult to heart and think of “home coming”, that will be rubbing salt to the wound of the TDP. That whether anybody would nurse such a feeling or the impudent chief of YSR Congress let them return is, of course, a different story.
