A crucial meeting of opposition parties to be held later this week has been deferred to early December, Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu said on Monday after meeting West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, the other prominent face of the front of anti-BJP parties. The front doesn’t intend to project a presumptive prime minister and will let this question be settled by the numbers that the parties get in the 2019 elections.
The grand alliance of opposition parties, however, has been ridiculed by the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well. PM Modi has said its leaders were driven by the greed to be prime minister. The question about the front’s leadership face came up again at a briefing that Naidu and Mamata Banerjee addressed after their meeting.
“Everyone will be face of this grand alliance,” the Andhra chief minister, who heads the Telugu Desam Party, shot back. “Compared to Narendra Modi, we are all seniors… (and) better performers,” he said.
Mamata Banerjee said the meeting of opposition parties had been put off because of the ongoing assembly elections. She said the meeting will now be held days before the winter session of parliament resumes and campaigning for December 7 elections in Rajasthan and Telangana.
Naidu said those who are opposing the BJP will join and discuss. “We will chalk out a programme to move forward take this momentum further on the agenda to protect the nation,” the TDP chief said.
He also attacked the NDA government at the Centre alleging that institutions like the CBI, ED, Income Tax department, RBI and CAG are under “severe pressure” from the government.
Naidu had last week withdrawn the state’s consent to let the CBI operate within Andhra and quickly enlisted instant support from the TMC chief to banish what they called, was a “politically motivated” CBI from their home states.
Chandrababu, leading a regional party whose genesis was rooted in the anti-Congress philosophy, had sprung a surprise in the national capital earlier this month when he met Congress president Rahul Gandhi in Delhi.
Earlier, Naidu had been to Chennai to rope in MK Stalin of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and Bangalore to meet former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda and Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy of JD-Secular on a similar mission.
Senior Congress leader and former Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot arrived in Amaravati on November 11 as an emissary of his party president Rahul Gandhi to discuss certain basics relating to the guiding principles for building anti-BJP alliance. National Conference leader Farooq Abdullah of Jammu and Kashmir and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP)’s Sharad Pawar from Maharashtra after meeting Naidu expressed their willingness to join the 22nd Delhi meeting and to work out a common minimum programme.
Although Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) offered Naidu her blessings after a meeting at her Delhi residence in end of October, she has kept her distance from the alliance, for now. Mayawati’s party is fighting the Congress in the Assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
Naidu today said he had been in touch with her but did not elaborate.
The TDP chief is yet to open a dialogue with Odisha Chief Minister Navin Patnaik of Biju Janata Dal. A certain clash of interests between Andhra Pradesh and Odisha such as formation of a railway zone in Visakhapatnam and construction of Polavaram seem to be roadblocks in their coming together, the analyst said.
First Published: Nov 19, 2018 20:52 IST
Source: HindustanTimes