Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu is understood have decided against campaigning for Trinamul Congress president and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections.
Reason: Naidu reportedly got the specific information that Mamata Banerjee had a telephonic talk with YSR Congress party president Y S Jaganmohan Reddy last week and sought his support to her candidature for Prime Minister post, in the event of regional parties winning majority of the seats.
Mamata also reopened the negotiations with Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on the possibility of forming a federal front in the post-election scenario.
Apparently, she thought it was the right time to push her candidature for the PM post, as she has been belligerently taking on the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Interestingly, during the recent assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh, Mamata and Arvind Kejriwal attended a massive rally in support of the TDP, wherein they focused more on targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP, rather than making an appeal to the voters to support the TDP.
What was disappointing for Naidu was that both Mamata and Kejriwal did not utter a word against YSRC president, though they praised Naidu’s leadership. They did not even take the name of Jagan, while asking the people to strengthen the hands of Naidu.
And for the last couple of days, Mamata started talking about the formation of a federal front of regional parties after the elections.
She told media that regional parties were going to come together in the form of a federal front which will choose the Prime Minister collectively after the elections.
“Whether it is Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Bihar or Assam – the regional parties will come together in the form of federal front and will choose their PM candidate,” she said the concept of grand alliance (Mahagathbandhan) was dynamic and it would change according to the situation.
It would mean, Mamata is open to the federal front concept of Telangana and AP regional parties – TRS and YSRC respectively.
Apparently, the TMC chief is not willing to accept the leadership of the Congress party headed by Rahul Gandhi.
Even AAP president Kejriwal is unhappy with Rahul, so he will not be averse to joining the federal front. This is against Naidu’s attempt to bring all anti-BJP parties under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi.
So, the grand alliance is going to split vertically after the polls and it will ultimately benefit the BJP!