At a time when there is a talk that YSR Congress party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy may go for early elections to the state assembly, his political rival and Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu says going to early elections would be a big mistake.
Naidu confessed this while taking part in the popular talk show “Unstoppable with NBK” season-2 being hosted by his brother-in-law and senior actor Nandamuri Balakrishna on Aha platform on Friday night.
When Balakrishna asked him what the biggest mistake of his life was, Naidu said dissolving the state assembly soon after the Naxalites’ bomb attack on him at Alipiri and going for early elections was a big mistake.
“I thought assembly elections would be held immediately after the dissolution of the state assembly, but they were delayed. This had resulted in development coming to a halt in the state and it had an impact on the party in the elections,” he said.
Naidu said following his decision, then Prime Minister A B Vajpayee, too, dissolved the Parliament to go for early elections. So did S M Krishna in Karnataka and Naveen Patnaik on Odisha.
“However, except Patnaik, all of us had lost our respective elections. We should not have done that,” he said.
Analysts, however, say Naidu would have lost the assembly elections in any way – whether it was early elections or as scheduled. There is more than one reason for it. But Naidu had become extremely unpopular with his anti-poor and pro-World Bank decisions like abnormal increase in power tariff.
Secondly, then Congress stalwart Y S Rajasekhar Reddy had gained tremendous popularity with his padayatra and the people were eagerly waiting to elect him because of his promises including free power to agriculture sector.
Thirdly, Telangana movement was gaining momentum and newly formed Telangana Rashtra Samithi led by K Chandrasekhar Rao established itself as a powerful political force in Telangana.
So, it would not have made much difference to Naidu whether it was early or late elections. It was only after YSR’s untimely death in 2009 that gave a new lease of political life to Naidu!