N Chandrababu Naidu sets to rest successor issue at Mahanadu

Telugu Desam Party (TDP) president N Chandrababu Naidu today indicated that his son Nara Lokesh Babu was not set to take a political plunge at this juncture.

Naidu, while addressing the party's annual convention, Mahanadu, at Gandipet, disapproved the efforts to project his son as the "future leader" by directing his party men not to indulge into such acts.

"Everyone should observe restraint. Otherwise, it will be construed as violation of the party discipline," the TDP president told the rank and file of the party today.

He also asked party leaders and workers not to put up any posters and banners displaying pictures of Lokesh.

Interestingly, scores of flexi-banners have been put up not only at the venue of Mahanadu but also along the 20-km stretch from the city.

This was for the first time that Lokesh's banners have come up during a party event even as the TDP unit of Chandragiri, Chandrababu's native constituency, passed a resolution seeking to make Lokesh the party in-charge there.

Naidu strongly snubbed the Chandragiri leaders and directed the Chittoor district party president not to encourage such acts.

He reportedly told his party colleagues that the party leadership issue did not arise as he was fit enough to lead it for a few more years.

There is, however, a growing clamour in a section of the TDP for handing over the party reigns to a member of the founder-president NT Rama Rao's family, though publicly no such demand has been raised so far.