There will be no surprise, if Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu makes an attempt to come back into the National Democratic Alliance fold, if the latter returns to power for a second successive term.
This is the suspicion of Bharatiya Janata Party national president Amit Shah.
“Naidu can change colours according to his requirements. He dumped the Congress and the BJP twice and if required, he may even try to stage a comeback into the NDA again. But we have closed the doors permanently for him,” Shah said in his rally in Guntur.
The BJP president recalled how Naidu changed colours very often.
In 1983, Naidu dumped the Congress to join the TDP which came to power under the leadership of his father-in-law N T Rama Rao. In 1995, he back-stabbed NTR and grabbed the party.
In 1999, he came to power basking in the glory of Kargil war and joined the NDA government headed by Atal Behari Vajpayee. When the NDA lost power in 2004, he lost no time to desert it.
In 2014, when there was a Narendra Modi wave across the country, Naidu quickly changed his stand and returned to the NDA fold by forging an alliance with the BJP. He came to power in AP riding on Modi wave.
“But when the people have started questioning his inability, he enacted a new drama and came out of the NDA,” he said.
In the December 7 assembly elections in Telangana, Naidu joined hands with the Congress which NTR had opposed strongly. But when the TDP got less than three per cent votes in Telangana elections, he dumped the Congress, too, and refused to have alliance in Andhra Pradesh elections.
“If NDA returns to power, don’t be surprised if the TDP chief will make an attempt to get back into the NDA fold once again. But, there is no question of allowing you back into the NDA,” he asserted.