Contrary to the talk that has been going on in the political circles for quite a long time, Telugu Desam Party will not have any alliance with the Congress party in the forthcoming assembly and Lok Sabha elections in Andhra Pradesh.
According to TDP sources, party president and chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu, during his recent meeting with Congress president Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi, conveyed to him that his party wants to go alone in the Andhra Pradesh elections.
“At the national level, the TDP will support the Congress party-led grand alliance. But at the state-level, the TDP will fight on its own,” he is learnt to have said.
Rahul also got the same feedback from the Congress party leaders in Andhra Pradesh, who suggested that it would be better for the party to contest on its own to test its strength.
If the Congress has a tie-up with the TDP, it would have to continue to play a second fiddle in the coming years, too, they told him.
Both the TDP and the Congress have realized that the alliance might backfire in AP, too, as it had in the recent assembly elections in Telangana.
Secondly, there is no guarantee that there would be transfer of votes between the TDP and the Congress.
And thirdly, the people are still not happy with the Congress for bifurcating the combined state and it might have an impact on the TDP.
At least if the Congress contests the elections alone, it might split the anti-establishment votes in the state thereby benefitting the TDP!
