Those who have been observing the talk of Bharatiya Janata Party floor leader in Andhra Pradesh assembly P Vishnu Kumar Raju for the last few weeks have found a drastic change in his attitude towards ruling Telugu Desam Party.
He has been going very soft towards TDP president and chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu inside and outside the state assembly. Not only that, he was even found showering praises on Naidu and his government.
Raju also made a gallery walk along with Naidu and his family and other MLAs in the Polavaram project spillway and was all praise for Naidu’s hard work.
He also had a lot of appreciation for Pattiseema project saying Naidu deserved praise for saving crops in Krishna delta in the last few seasons.
This has come as a shock to the BJP leaders like Rajya Sabha member G V L Narasimha Rao, who has been virtually creating sleepless nights to the TDP leaders with a series of attacks and allegations of corruption.
In the assembly, too, the BJP floor leaders refrained from attacking Naidu during the recent monsoon session. On the other hand, he gave a lot of appreciation for Naidu’s programme of Anna canteens.
This was not the case with Raju a couple of months before. He used to regularly attack Naidu along with MLC Somu Veerraju.
What was more, he used to praise YSR Congress party and its president Y S Jaganmohan Reddy a lot. He even said the YSRC graph was going up and that of the TDP was going down steeply.
“In the next elections, both the TDP and the BJP will face the debacle. And YSRC is going to come to power. That is for sure,” he said.
At one stage, there was a talk that he might join the YSRC and ask for party ticket from his own seat in Visakhpatnam East constituency.
Though a hard core Sangh activist, Raju is also a true politician and he has realized that the BJP would fare badly in the next elections and that he would not win his seat, if he continued in the BJP. So, he tried to send feelers to the YSRC.
There were reports that he might join the YSRC during the visit of Jagan to Visakhapatnam as part of his padayatra.
In fact, Vishnu himself declared that he would personally welcome Jagan into Visakhapatnam. But it did not happen.
Apparently, Jagan did not respond to Vishnu’s feelers and he had made alternative arrangements for Visakhapatnam East. As a result, Vishnu changed his stand and is now appeasing the TDP, sources said.