TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu's alleged arm-twisting of TDP Telangana MLAs to accept his Stanford-returned son Nara Lokesh as the party leader in the region seems to have backfired.
The Telangana TDP cadres and leaders have more or less rejected the leadership of Lokesh. Even during the last general election campaign, Lokesh's convoy in the Telangana district of Mahbubnagar was stoned allegedly by local cadres but dubbed as TRS workers by police.
Within 24 hours of his announcement that his son will become the 'strategic leader of Telangana TDP ' to implement the programmes of the party, five legislators (four MLAs and one MLC) have walked over to the ruling Telangana Rastra Samiti
"We are hurt by the way a rank junior like Lokesh was projected as the next leader in Telangana sidelining seniors who slogged for the party during tough times," says former minister Talasani Srinivas Yadav (Sanatnagar MLA). Along with other rebel Telangana TDP MLAs Yadav called on Telengana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and accepted the TRS party khandua (scarf) in a symbolic admission into the ruling party.
No doubt the promotion of Naidu's son has already led to division in the ruling TDP in Andhra Pradesh. While some ministers such as P Pulla Rao (agriculture) have said that Lokesh had "all required qualities to become CM", other senior ministers such as K E Krishnamurthy (deputy CM) have pooh-poohed such adulation of the junior Naidu.
"Our ministers should not ignore that our leader NTR had opposed such dynastic leadership," Krishnamurthy says.
Srinivasa Yadav along with former Hyderabad mayor Teegala Krishna Reddy (Maheswaram), Prakash Goud (Rajendranagar), Dharma Reddy (Parkal-Warangal district) and MLC Gangadhar Goud declared after joining the TRS that they wanted to be part of the mainstream to transform the region into a Golden Telangana.
The exit of four MLAs from TDP was not a surprise as their sessions with the TRS chief minister have been in news often. But the introduction of Lokesh on the Telangana scene had given them the much-needed excuse to switch over. The latest exodus from TDP reduces its strength from 20 to 11 after nine MLAs had walked over to TRS in the last four months in a House of 119 where in the ruling TRS is now inching towards the figure of 85 with TDP and Congress rebels. "Day after day it is becoming crystal clear the TDP is more of an AP party and we Telangana leaders are suffocated," says Tegala Krishna Reddy, once a close aide of TDP founder NTR and also a past mayor of Hyderabad.
Those opposing Lokesh's elevation fell that the senior Naidu is trying to position him as the future second –in command of the party. Lokesh is chief of the corpus fund for party workers and is supervising the day-to-day activities, including finances, programmes and also the IT cell of the TDP at NTR Bhavan. Further Lokesh has placed his close associate and Stanford classmate Abhista as an OSD (officer on special duty) in chief minister's office. He is also allegedly whetting and supervising the appointment of personal staff of ministers. "In other words, Naidu is allowing Lokesh to develop his own chain of loyalists in the party and government," says a senior AP minister on anonymity.
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