The aftershocks of the alleged murder attempt on Andhra Pradesh opposition leader Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy and its aftermath is being felt in the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh.
Telangana is going to polls on December 7 and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu is now a central figure in the upcoming elections in the newest state of the country.
All the while, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) supremo had distanced himself from Telangana unit activities giving an impression that local leaders were running the show. Though he gave his blessings to the TDP-Congress alliance, he refrained from directly attacking his political foe and Telangana chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao and his party the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS).
But everything changed on the day Jagan Reddy was attacked.
Taking an aggressive posture against most of his opponents, Chandrababu held a press meet in the night and dragged KCR, and his son and IT Minister K.T. Rama Rao into the issue and accused them of being a part of a larger conspiracy that Jagan hatched to gain sympathy. The reason given was that both the Telangana leaders had reacted immediately and tweeted condemning the incident.
Now, KCR as a movement leader was a firebrand and his passionate speeches cantering around Telangana demand were a cracker. In 2014 elections, even though the state was in the process of bifurcation, he rode high on Telangana sentiment and blamed the opposition parties and their Rayalaseema and Andhra leaders for meting out injustice to the region. This time around, he is on the defensive as he is trying to explain the good work done by his government in the last four years and douse the fire of anti-incumbency. There was not much scope to stir up the sentiment as a separate state had already been achieved. The TRS was searching for that imminent outside threat to attack and it came in the form of Chandrababu.
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The remand report submitted by the Vizag police to the court more or less debunked the theory put forth by Naidu that it was an intentional attack. The police said the attacker wanted to take the life of Jagan. This has given increased firepower to the opposition in Andhra and the TRS in Telangana. Around the same time, Rama Rao has also accused Andhra intelligence officers of trespassing into Telangana to influence elections on the orders of Chandrababu. The TRS is also making noise about how Chandrababu is pumping huge money in the state.
Chandrababu is reportedly lobbying for more share of seats for the TDP from the Congress, the CPI and the Telangana Jana Samithi who are part of the Grand Alliance. The opposition parties has something to worry about as their mascot is turning out to be Chandrababu, and not local senior Congress leaders or Prof Kodandram, representing the Telangana intellectuals.
At the end of the day, Chandrababu is an Andhra leader and he attacking KCR, who is still remembered for his Telangana movement, has every possibility of reopening old wounds. For now, it is KCR vs Chandrababu. It is highly likely that KCR will be back in his pre-2014 avatar, going in with all guns blazing, aimed at Amaravati.
