The meeting of Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu with Jana Sena Party chief and power star Pawan Kalyan at a hotel in Vijayawada a couple of days ago, after a long gap of five years, has more or less confirmed that both the parties are inching towards an alliance.
Though both the leaders had been holding backroom negotiations all these days, the Vijayawada meeting has brought this alliance to the open. It is only a matter of time that Naidu and Pawan would talk about seat sharing pact.
However, according to latest reports doing rounds in Andhra political circles, the alliance is not going to be confined to just two parties, but some other parties might also be part of it.
The reports said Aam Admi Party represented by former Central Bureau of Investigation joint director V V Lakshminarayana and Lok Satta headed by former IAS officer and ex-MLA Dr Jayaprakash Narayan are also evincing interest in joining the alliance.
However, both these parties – AAP and Lok Satta do not want any share in the assembly seats. They want a couple of seats for the Lok Sabha elections as part of seat sharing.
While Jayaprakash Narayan is interested in contesting the Lok Sabha elections from Vijayawada parliamentary constituency, JD Lakshminarayana is interested in contesting from Visakhapatnam parliamentary constituency on behalf of AAP.
So, it would be a sort of grand alliance of four parties. But what about the Bharatiya Janata Party, which already has an alliance with the Jana Sena Party?
As Pawan indicated the other day, the Jana Sena might snap ties with the saffron party which has failed to provide any road map to fight against the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government. However, the BJP is keen on continuing the alliance with Pawan for now.
In that event, the BJP may have to join the alliance with TDP and Jana Sena. But if the BJP agrees to have a tie up with the TDP, the Aam Admi Party might not agree to be part of the alliance and so wlill be Lok Satta.
So, that is a tricky situation!