N Chandrababu Naidu fumes at TD leaders for skipping meets

VIJAYAWADA: The Telugu Desam leadership is unable to figure out the voting trends in the April 11 Lok Sabha elections during its analyses at review meetings. TD president and AP Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu is fuming at TD leaders for either skipping the meetings or neglecting to submit reports.

The TD high command had directed candidates and leaders to attend review meetings and submit reports about booth-level voting trends and the chances of the party in every constituency.

According to sources, many leaders feel that there is no use of holding the review meetings now as the results will be declared only on May 23. They feel the meetings should be conducted after the results as the high command would then get a chance to review the situation thoroughly about cross-voting, covert activity and other reasons in places where the party lost.

Earlier, Mr Naidu conducted an election trend review on Rajahmundry Parliament constituency and its seven Assembly segments. TD leaders of Anaparthi constituency alleged that East Godavari TD leader and former MLC Boddu Bhaskara Rama Rao worked against the party and colluded with the YSRC. Another TD leader, Mr Adireddy Appa Rao, alleged that Rajahmundry Municipal Corporation Mayor P. Rajani Sesha Sai worked against TD candidates.

TD leaders at Kovvur said that the party expected Jana Sena candidates could split the YSRC votes by Jana Sena candidates, but Mr Pawan Kalyan’s party actually split the TD’s votes. They also claimed that illegal sand mining, selling sand at high rates despite the free sand policy, MRP violation in the selling of liquor and corruption had an effect on the voters.

Mr Naidu became angry over the absence of Srikakulam TD legislator G. Lakshmi Devi and other leaders from the constituency. He said that if Ms Lakshmi was unable to attend the meeting due to the death of her father, she should have sent other leaders with the reports. Mr Naidu changed his earlier claim of the TD winning 150 seats out of 175 in the Assembly. After conducting a few reviews, he has brought down the figure to 110 seats.

A TD leader said that a few candidates, who were tense due to the bitter experience they faced in the elections, were reluctant to attend the review meetings and face the anger of Mr Naidu after reporting the truth. He said that some leaders who attended the meetings were trying to please Mr Naidu by claiming victory, though by a smaller margin.

He said  that according to sources, the TD candidates and leaders were preparing to leave the party if the results show that it has performed poorly. Hence Mr Naidu and others should concentrate on protecting the cadres instead of punishing them in the name of poll reviews or retrospection, he said.