The idiom 'once bitten, twice shy' cannot be readily applied in political corridors, especially in the context of the Bharatiya Janatha Party and the Telugu Desam Party. As parliamentary elections draw closer, the national and regional parties may come together for the third time, despite a history of bitter breakups in the past. TDP national president N. Chandrababu Naidu is likely to meet top BJP leaders, including Amit Shah, in Delhi on Wednesday. Alongside the Lok Sabha elections, the Andhra Pradesh Assembly elections will be held simultaneously this year.
Between 1999 and 2004, when Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee led the NDA, Naidu, then chief minister of united Andhra Pradesh, extended outside support to the BJP coalition. Post-2004, after the NDA and TDP lost power at the Center and in the state respectively, Naidu blamed the BJP’s anti-minority activities for his party’s debacle. He maintained this stance for the next one decade, vowing never to align with the BJP again. In 2014, Naidu returned to the NDA fold, and his party MPs were part of the union cabinet while he became the chief minister for the third time of the newly bifurcated state of Andhra Pradesh.
In 2018, Naidu once again severed ties with the NDA, this time over the issue of special category status for Andhra Pradesh. He reverted to his earlier stand, blaming the NDA for alienating minorities from his party and launched a blistering attack on the BJP and even compared PM Modi to a terrorist . Responding to this, Modi and Shah accused Naidu’s family of corruption and labeled him as the 'U-Turn' chief minister.
After his party's dismal performance in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly elections in 2019, Naidu took a neutral approach towards the NDA. Fast forward to 2024, the TDP and the BJP are attempting to reunite, much to the chagrin of their cadres who seem to harbor bitter feelings on the ground and a looming trust deficit owing to their past.
Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena Party (JSP) is already in alliance with both the BJP and the TDP. If all three parties decide to fight together, the biggest challenge would be accommodating each other, as all three aim to improve their performances. In the last Assembly elections held in 2019 for 175 seats, the BJP did not win a single seat while the Jana Sena won one seat. The TDP won 23 seats. Vote transfer would also be tricky, as a section of the BJP cadre and leaders resent TDP, feeling that their growth is hampered by the alliance with the allotment of meager seats. The Jana Sena cadre, to some extent, also do not want to compromise on the number of seats, as they do not want Pawan Kalyan to play second fiddle to Naidu this time. The TDP and the JSP, which were trying to work out a seat-sharing formula, might have to go back to the drawing board to devise a winnable formula acceptable to all the parties.
