The announcement made by Telugu Desam Party that it is not looking for any alliance with any party for the 2019 elections in Andhra Pradesh is being taken with a pinch of salt by the political observers in the state.
Senior TDP leader and Information and Public Relations Minister Kalava Srinivasulu told the media in Vijayawada that the TDP was confident of retaining power in the State on its own going by its track record and good work done by the government under the leadership of N Chandrababu Naidu.
But the fact is that the TDP does not have any friends, after it snapped ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party in April this year.
In 2014, apart from the BJP which had an alliance with it, the TDP also had the support from Jana Sena Party floated by power star Pawan Kalyan and that helped him a lot.
Now, both the BJP and the Jana Sena Party severed ties with the TDP. The mighty opposition YSR Congress party is giving Naidu a run for his money.
The Communist parties have joined hands with Jana Sena. The Congress is not in a position to resurrect itself let alone have the luxury of forging alliance with any other party.
So, who else is left for the TDP to have an alliance in the elections? It has no option but to fight it alone.
Interestingly, it will be for the first time that the TDP is going to fight the elections alone. Even in the first elections it had contested in 1983, the TDP had an alliance with an unknown party called Sanjay Vichar Manch.
Subsequently, in every election, it had alliances with the Communists or the BJP or other parties. So, how Naidu is going to fight the next elections alone remains to be seen.
