YS Rajasekhara Reddy has put his foot down and said no to Telangana. Chandrababu Naidu had to change his body language and be polite with Modi’s mantris in the current avatar, while he used to demo his confidence in the ease of his sitting posture with Prime Minister Vajpayee. Delhi respects numbers.
Delineating between being strong and becoming weak in Delhi, Sanjaya Baru, former Media Advisor to Manmohan Singh between 2004 and 2009 when the latter was the Prime Minister of India, disclosed several interesting facts.
Baru told journalist Sriram Karri, the questioner of the evening at a talk show on “Modi and Media” in Hyderabad on Friday, that YSR was singularity responsible for preventing the creation of Telangana in 2008. He could successfully prevent the creation of Telangana.
To a straight question by Karri whether YSR was responsible for prevention of the bifurcation, Baru had to take a pause, smile and respond in the affirmative.
Though he was from Telangana, he had always opposed the bifurcation of the State, despite knowing the problems and deprivation confronted by the region, at the cost of being cursed. And, he had his own reasons for the same.
When YSR could have 29 MPs elected from the State, his swagger was different. He had called on the Prime Minister and had said that the Congress would secure a bummer, if it had bifurcated the State. For, people of Andhra would be angry over the division, and people of Telangana would ascribe the credit to KCR.
Later, he won 33 Lok Sabha seats and consolidated his popularity in Delhi. He was proved right in the assessment even after five years and the Congress came a cropper.
Baru recalled how the numbers given by AP used to ensure the leaders from the State wielded power in Delhi.
Chandrababu Naidu created NDA with the numbers. He used to sit in a relaxed and a regal posture while talking to Prime Minister Vajpayee and his Cabinet colleagues.
“Now look at the same man. How he sits in front of Rajnath Singh or Arun Jaitley and how they sit. Delhi respects numbers. After Hindi-speaking Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Andhra Pradesh was the biggest grosser for the party in power in Delhi always. Now, it is no longer so,” Baru said.
He recalled the lion’s share united Andhra Pradesh had reaped saying it had given three Presidents and one Prime Minister.
He couldn’t apparently take a query on how far was it justified for people at high places authoring books after coming out of the jobs and if Prime Ministers wouldn’t be afraid to hire media advisors. It may be recalled that Baru authored “An accidental Prime Minister” on Manmohan Singh.
At least 25 secretaries in the US and 10 in the UK authored books to share the inside stories with the people. In matured democracies, it was an accepted practice to author books. He referred to the criticism of Iraq war during the regime of George W Bush and Afghanistan war in Obama rule by the Defence Secretary Robert Gates under the two presidents.
The preface of Natwar Singh’s autobiography and Pranab Mukherjee’s criticism of Rajiv Gandhi in the latter’s work recently published even as Mr Mukherjee is holding the highest office in India stand testimony to expounding their experiences and impaling the foibles of different people. There’s nothing wrong in writing books with such experiences, Baru asserted.
