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Andhra Pradesh debacle sends NDA into a huddle
Naidu's ouster from Andhra Pradesh has set off a chain of events that has major implications for the formation of a Govt at the Centre.
Chandrababu Naidu's ouster has set off a chain of events that has major implications for the formation of a government at the Centre.
For the NDA, it isn't just TDP's defeat that's worrying, it's the nature of the loss that the coalition will agonise over. Two things about the defeat stand out. First, that Naidu's party has lost by a landslide. And second, that this loss is spread across all three major regions of state: Telengana, Rayalseema and coastal Andhra Pradesh.
Each parliamentary constituency is divided into roughly 7-8 assembly segments. If assembly losses are spread all over, the likelihood of losses in the Lok Sabha polls increases. In order to win seats in Parliament, assembly segments need to be won in clusters.
The TDP (29 seats) and the BJP (7) together won 36 seats in the state in 1999. The Congress got five.
But if the assembly polls are any indication, those figures could be reversed. Before the assembly results were out, exit polls gave the TDP-BJP combine between 12 and 24 seats in Andhra Pradesh.
The result in Andhra sent the BJP leadership into a huddle in the Prime Minister's house. And though the party has decided to brazen it out in public — saying the NDA was on course for 300 seats — the efforts to stitch together a coalition (with a base figure of 245) are on. NDA convenor George Fernandes tried to contact NCP chief Sharad Pawar, without luck. Later, Pawar ruled out the possibility of NCP joining the NDA.
But Fernandes is reportedly in touch with a number of other smaller parties. Among them are the Indian National Lok Dal, the Haryana Vikas Party, the National Conference, the Rashtriya Lok Dal and the Asom Gana Parishad. However, after the BJP strategy session, party president Venkaiah Naidu said that the BJP was not "talking to any parties".
A section of the BJP feels it should sit in the Opposition if the NDA gets less than 245 seats, but the dominant view in the party is that it needs to form the government at any cost. "A non-NDA government will be unstable and we may have to face elections again within a year. This isn't acceptable," said a senior leader.
Even as the BJP struggled with the depressing numbers before it, the Congress stepped up efforts to firm up a coalition of non-NDA allies in order to prevent the BJP from staking claim for power at the Centre.
