BJP not to play second fiddle to TDP

​New Delhi: The BJP leadership is in the process of honing its AP strategy not only to take on the Opposition but also the ruling ally, the TDP, ‘if need be’. The party which has become strident in its criticism of the Opposition over the Centre's inability in according Special Category Status to AP is planning to appropriate credit for "all the development in the state instead of playing a second fiddle", according to sources.

The national leadership has drawn a specific AP-centric approach – an individual one - and is no more in any mood to concede ground to its ally, the TDP, it is being said.

The brief given to its AP leaders in the last two days indicates this twist to the friendship tale. Those who met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party president Amit Shah were told to take on criticism from "every quarter including that of the TDP seriously" and hit back.

The remarks of Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu in the wake of the announcement of special assistance package, have not gone down well here. Naidu's claim that he would be seeking more details on the assistance to the Polavaram project has also not been appreciated much.

The categorical statement of Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley that the Centre had agreed to the demand of the state government to hand over the Polavaram project construction to it "because of the special interest shown by the state government" was a quite loaded one, it is said.

Though this move could provoke a debate - the Congress was smart enough to point out already - on the necessity of another amendment to the AP Reorganization Act as it was stipulated that the Centre would take up the project, Jaitley deliberately agreed for the same.

This, in effect, would mean that the fund flow to the project could be less than anticipated by the state and leading to a confrontation over the same in future as the Centre would now be responsible only for the main structure and not for the canals or distributory works or land acquisition, etc.

But, the BJP has its own plan on how to deal with as Polavaram is as essential to the image of the ruling dispensation as well the new capital.

The Centre is also keeping a watch on the capital plans of the TDP and is closely following every move and every proposal as it is convinced that an administrative capital consisting of five buildings – the Secretariat, the Raj Bhavan, the Assembly, the High Court and employees’ quarters, a la Gandhinagar of Gujarat - would do.

All this requires just a few hundred acres of land. The city should grow in the natural course, the sources say indicating that the BJP could make a case out of the present plans any day. The central BJP leadership, feels the advantage of these manouvres and would like to score over its ally in this regard.