Jagan woos BJP for poll alliance in AP
He is understood to have offered 15 to 18 out of AP’s 25 Lok Sabha seats to BJP to fight from.
partner in AP.
Shah, who hours before had a meeting with TDP president and AP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, had expressed his annoyance over such display of placards by the cadre and mildly chided them, saying that elections were two years away to talk about electoral alliances. “I advise you to go and strengthen the party in your areas,” Shah told the sloganeering party workers.
Shah, who had spent a couple of hours with senior leaders at a private guest house owned by BJP MP Gokaraju Ganga Raju on the banks of Krishna river, had to deal with senior leaders who were divided into two camps—one, seeking continuation of alliance with TDP and another to change partner and go with YSR Congress, if BJP were to get more seats in AP.
According to sources in the BJP who were present at the meeting, Shah assured both the groups that he would “convey their views to the Prime Minister” and “take an appropriate decision at the appropriate time”. He told them to concentrate on expanding the party at the polling booth level in the coming years and leave the job of electoral adjustments to the national leadership.
BJP’s AP unit president and MP K. Hari Babu and AP Health Minister Kamineni Srinivas were prominent among those who argued for continuation of the party’s present alliance with the TDP, while another section consisting former Union ministers Kavuri Sambasiva Rao, Daggubati Purandeswari, former AP minister Kanna Lakshminarayana pressed for a tie-up with Jagan’s YSR Congress.
BJP heavyweight, Union I&B Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu refused to be drawn into the row and preferred to stay neutral, a BJP MLA in AP who preferred anonymity told The Sunday Guardian. Though the number of those who prefer YSR Congress is bigger, they suffer one major drawback—that most of them had joined BJP only after 2014,” the MLA explained.
The rumblings within BJP’s AP unit has grown louder ever since YSR Congress president Jagan called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi three weeks ago, on 10 May in New Delhi and extended his support to the BJP’s nominee in the upcoming presidential elections. In the meeting, where Jagan had a one-on-one meeting with the PM for about 25 minutes, the issue of poll tie up is believed to have come up.
According to BJP sources, at the meeting, Jagan is understood to have offered 15 to 18 out of the total 25 Lok Sabha seats from AP, if BJP comes forward to have an alliance with him. Presently, BJP has two MPs out of the three LS seats it contested in 2014. The number of LS seats Jagan believed to have offered to BJP is far greater than that of TDP, sources pointed out.
However, for the record, Shah had a cordial meeting with CM Naidu at a luncheon meeting hosted by the latter at his official residence on the banks of Krishna river near Amaravati, where senior leaders Venkaiah Naidu and Hari Babu were present. Shah assured Naidu that efforts would be made to strengthen the TDP-BJP combine in the coming days.
CM Naidu is clearly keen on continuing TDP’s alliance with BJP in the next elections. At a recent media conference, he said that TDP and BJP were pre-poll partners right from 2014 elections and there shall not be any doubt about it in the future too.