Hyderabad: Amid all the political drama over the arrest of Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief N. Chandrababu Naidu, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coming to his support has come as a surprise. In a post on X Saturday, Andhra Pradesh BJP chief Daggubati Purandeswari condemned the arrest.
“The arrest sans a proper notice, without his name mentioned in the FIR, without seeking an explanation and bypassing procedures is unjustified. The BJP condemns this,” wrote Purandeswari.
The state BJP chief is also Naidu’s sister-in-law but the two reportedly don’t share the best equation.
Naidu was arrested by the state Crime Investigation Department (CID) early morning Saturday for his alleged role in the Rs 371 crore AP skills development corporation scam. He was taken to Amaravati where the CID produced him before an anti-corruption bureau (ACB) court magistrate seeking his remand.
Purandeswari’s tweet comes at a time when Naidu is vying to get back into the BJP-led NDA fold, but has not yet received a green signal.
Naidu became Andhra’s chief minister in 2014, winning the state polls in alliance with the BJP and JanaSena Party. He had addressed joint election rallies with the then PM contestant Narendra Modi and even included two of the four BJP MLAs into his cabinet. But relations soured over the matter of special category status to Andhra Pradesh after the state lost its power engine Hyderabad to Telangana post the bifurcation that year.
Not only did Naidu exit the NDA in March 2018, he went with the TDP’s once arch-rival Congress in the 2018 Telangana polls.
After Naidu’s June meeting with Home Minister Amit Shah, TDP leaders reportedly saw a thaw in relations and expected their chief to be invited to the PM’s meeting with allies and like-minded parties in New Delhi last month. But that was not the case.
Though Purandeswari’s reaction does not drastically change the political equation between the TDP and BJP, analysts see it as a positive sign, a step towards the rejoining of the two parties.
“The arrest criticism was the decent thing to do for Purandeswari, especially when all parties, including JanaSena, except of course the ruling YSRCP, have opposed it. By stating that the BJP condemns it, we can infer that she meant all of BJP — including the Delhi leadership — has criticised the Jagan (CM YS Jagan Mohan Reddy) government’s approach,” D.A.R. Subrahmanyam, political analyst and chairman of the Guntur-based Navyandhra Intellectual Forum, told ThePrint.
The relation between Naidu and his sister-in-law Purandeswari have lately been seen as non-confrontational if not cordial.
“I do not remember Purandeswari criticising Naidu since joining the BJP, compared to the hostility (there was) when she was in the Congress. If the BJP bosses tomorrow decide to join hands with Naidu again, Purandeswari might not oppose it,” Subrahmanyam added.
Purandeswari — who served as minister of state for human resources development and commerce in the UPA governments — and Naidu were recently seen together, along with their families, during the release event of NTR birth centenary special coin by the President of India Droupadi Murmu in New Delhi.
Noted Tollywood personality and TDP MLA Nandamuri Balakrishna has accused CM Jaganmohan Reddy of “resorting to political vengeance instead of concentrating on people’s welfare”.
“It is the misfortune of Andhra Pradesh’s people to have Jagan as their chief minister. As Jagan was in jail for 16 months (in a disproportionate assets case), he wants to see to it that Chandrababu goes behind bars for at least 16 minutes,” Balakrishna, Purandeswari’s brother and Naidu’s brother-in-law, told media persons.
Questioning the legality of the arrest, “particularly in the absence of concrete evidence”, Balakrishna argued that the scam allegations on Naidu “are part of a larger political conspiracy.”
Also read: The ‘Rs 3,300-cr govt deal & skill development project’ behind Andhra ex-CM Chandrababu’s arrest