Strange bedfellows or best pals?

It came as a surprise to many when Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao called his AP counterpart N Chandrababu Naidu his best friend. Everyone in the two Telugu states knows them as bitter rivals but not as friends.

Recall the days of Telangana movement. Has any politician ever embarrassed Naidu as much as Rao did? The kind of words that he had used surprised even language pundits and sent them scurrying to consult dictionaries.

To name a few, he used to call Naidu ‘lathkore,’ his followers ‘thotti gang,’ and used to describe Naidu's voice-brigades as stray dogs. Not one to take things lying down, Naidu also used to run him down with choicest epithets so much so that they always looked like two bulls locking their horns.

KCR has benefited by calling Naidu names and describing him as principal villain of Telangana. Same KCR said Naidu was his best friend when a reporter asked him whether Naidu was welcome to be part of his federal front.

Though Naidu too pummelled KCR, he lost Telangana battle and had to shift to Andhra Pradesh. In the initial days when embers were still smouldering, Naidu used to threaten KCR and TRS government of action using his police force if the neighbouring state resorted to any misadventure in the infamous note-for-vote scam.

Subsequently, he lost interest in KCR, since by then YSRC’s YS Jaganmohan Reddy opened another battlefront in AP, calling Naidu to account for everything that went awry in the state.

Naidu who was once a persona non grata is now important to KCR since Naidu at national level draws a lot of water. At the moment, he is now daggers drawn with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which suits KCR well since the federal front is basically an anti-BJP and anti-Congress formation.

As Telugu Desam Party's foundations are built on anti-Congressim as his father-in-law and Telugu Desam founder-president NT Rama Rao used to say and as TDP remains anti-Congress till date, the TDP is the right fit for the federal front.

But there are imperceptible indications that the TDP might not remain anti-Congress in future. If Naidu goes in for a major policy shift and moves closer to Congress to ramp up support in his fight with Modi, then it is a worrying factor for KCR.

Already there is a suspicion that Naidu is not totally against Congress after he has asked his leaders to campaign in the areas in Karnataka where Telugu people live to vote against the BJP. As Congress is a national party, it is taken for granted that if Telugus heed Naidu's advice, they would vote for the Congress and not for the regional party JD (S) which has influence only in some sections.

If Naidu aligns with the Congress at the national level, it does not cause any embarrassment to him either, since, in AP, he does not have Congress to fight, unlike KCR whose principal rival in Telangana is Congress. Congress is a dead duck in AP and it is not showing any signs of acquiring life to bother Naidu.

Naidu is neck deep in fighting with BJP and Narendra Modi while at the same time he cannot lose sight of YSRC and Pawan Kalyan, whom Naidu dubs as Narendra Modi's invisible allies. So, in AP, the battle lines are clear, on one side is positioned Naidu and Telugu Desam and on the other, the axis of BJP-YSRC-Jana Sena, if one goes by Naidu's surmise that the YSRC and Jana Sena dance attendance upon at the BJP.

As Naidu is fighting his battle with the BPJ in the State, KCR, all of a sudden, burst out at Narendra Modi at a farmers' convention in Karimnagar and announced that he would do his best to get all the parties which are ranged against the BJP and the Congress on one side in the interest of the nation since under their dispensation, the country had not moved forward and, on the contrary, its journey was retrogressive.

Now KCR and Naidu have a common ground as far training guns at the BJP is concerned but when it comes to Congress, KCR is clear that he wants to take on the grand old party also. But, would Naidu do that? In fact, several leaders whom KCR had met of late were non-committal on opposing the Congress, though they were very clear that he would fight to the last in ending the BJP rule in the country.

As the federal front is still in its infancy, it is not clear how the political formation would be like since Naidu may want to support the Congress in his fight with the BJP. It is interesting that KCR sees a friend in Naidu, and there are subtle indications that Naidu might see a friend in Congress in the overall scheme of things to bury the BJP in a hole as deep as Mariana Trench.

Naidu has travelled through the experiences of fronts in the past – the National Front (1989-91) when NTR was its convenor during which VP Singh was Prime Minister and then Chandrasekhar. Later in 1996-98, United Front was formed which saw Deve Gowda becoming the Prime Minister. He was succeeded by IK Gujral but this front too collapsed. During the days of the United Front, Chandrababu Naidu declined to accept the offer of the office of the Prime Minister.

The fronts having a poor record of staying together, it remains to be seen how it could emerge as an alternative and what kind of role Chandrababu Naidu would finally be playing in the wake of his assertions that after 2019, he will decide who should be the Prime Minister of the country.

By R Prithvi Raj