At a meeting with BJP Andhra Pradesh unit office bearers last month, senior leader Venkaiah Naidu delivered a terse message stating that nobody should question who the BJP should ally with. Many in the gathering believe the diktat was for Kishan Reddy, the president of the state BJP, who has openly spoken about his aversion to an alliance with N. Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam Party.
"All and sundry need not talk about who the BJP should or should not ally with in Andhra Pradesh. That decision will be taken by the central leadership," he had said.
Sources in both the Telugu Desam and the BJP have confirmed that the basic contours of an alliance are in place. At a crucial meeting at Gujarat Bhavan in New Delhi last week, TDP supremo Naidu laid out before Narendra Modi the roadmap for alliance to win 30 Lok Sabha seats from Andhra Pradesh. While that may seem like painting a very rosy picture of the situation on the ground, political analysts believe Naidu is more desperate than Modi to seal the alliance
Split opinions
But the engagement is unlikely to be announced till the fate of the crucial Telangana Bill, in the current session of Parliament, is known. The BJP is still a house divided on the contentious issue of which way to go on Telangana. While one section argues that Telangana is a hot potato and should be left to the Congress to deal with, another believes that the BJP should promise that it will give its nod to Telangana while granting a fantastic deal for Seemandhra, within 100 days of coming to power.
The Seemandhra lobby in the TDP is pushing for the latter option with the BJP to buy time and goodwill in the region that sends 25 MPs to the Lok Sabha. But Naidu has also been asked by the BJP to let Telangana be formed and consider boarding the Andhra Express and move to Delhi as a Union minister in a future NDA government-which is why Malkajgiri and Hindupur Lok Sabha seats are being looked at as safe seats for Naidu to contest from, should he take up that offer.
Vote share
With the BJP and the TDP getting back together after a decade, Naidu has realised that he needs to get the pro-Modi votes into his kitty, especially in Andhra Pradesh's urban pockets which a reason why he has taken a U-turn on the harsh words he spoke against the BJP in the aftermath of the 2004 debacle when it blamed BJP for the loss of minority votes.
The BJP has also realised that limiting itself to Telangana has not worked wonders for the party. In December, a senior state BJP leader was asked by party president Rajnath Singh to examine how an alliance with the TDP would help the party. In his report, the leader was sceptical of the reach of the Telangana sentiment beyond five districts in the region.
"Large parts of Mahbubnagar, Ranga Reddy, Hyderabad city, Khammam, Adilabad and parts of Nizamabad have no significant Telangana sentiment," the report said.
The report also pointed out that the OBCs in Telangana are still with the TDP and Naidu's vote share will help it put up a stiff challenge to a possible Congress-TRS alliance in the region. In Seemandhra, the TDP is facing a stiff challenge from Jaganmohan Reddy and having Modi on its side can prove to be the game changer.
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