After a gap of nearly one and a half years, Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu had a one-on-one meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday, amidst reports of growing gap between the TDP and its alliance partner BJP in the state.
The last time Naidu had a meeting with the Prime Minister was on August 25, 2016 to present a long list of demands.
Though he had met Modi again in January 2017, but it was along with an official delegation in the capacity of convenor of the Committee on Digital Economy.
A lot of water has flown in Krishna river since then and it has even become dirty with the BJP leaders stepping up attack on the Naidu government for ignoring the alliance partner.
The latest attack came from his own cabinet minister P Manikyala Rao of the BJP, who threatened to split the state if the TDP does not respect its ally.
Now, the question is what Naidu had gained from meeting Modi. He gave a 17-page representation to the Prime Minister and explained in detail what is needed for the state.
Nobody knows what exactly transpired in the meeting, but Naidu spoke more or less in a requesting tone, rather than sounding strong in his appeal.
“It did not appear Naidu was bringing pressure on the Centre, but was only begging. And Modi was in his usual style of being casual in his approach and did not appear taking Naidu very seriously.
All that he said was that he would do his best to resolve all the issues. One can read from Naidu’s face at the press conference that he was apparently in a dejected mood,” a source from Delhi said.
Naidu focussed more on asking for release of funds towards offsetting the revenue deficit, for Polavaram and the capital, besides the routine promises made in the AP Reorganisation Act.
In fact, there was a talk that he would raise the issue of Special Category Status with Modi, in the wake of revival of the demand by the opposition parties in a big way in the recent past, but he confined himself to asking release of funds under special financial package.
