N Chandrababu Naidu might find it tough to handle Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati
Hyderabad: When Telugu Desam president and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu met All India Trinamul president and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata, sources said that Ms Banerjee sent out a strong message to Mr Naidu that she can’t be taken for granted. This forced the postponement of the proposed anti-BJP meet which Mr Naidu had fixed in consultation with Congress chief Rahul Gandhi.
Mr Naidu will also find it tough to manage and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati as he pursues his dream of besting the BJP and Narendra Modi in the next general election.
He and other regional satraps have no problem accepting the Congress as the big brother in any alliance of opposition parties, but Ms Banerjee and Ms Mayawati are in no mood to accept this.Mr Naidu has been trying to forge an anti-BJP alliance of regional parties, along with the Congress, ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. In the past few weeks, he has met several regional leaders and Congress chief Rahul Gandhi to discuss the same. Mr Naidu had earlier announced an anti-BJP party conclave in the capital, for which he had met Congress general secretary Ashok Gehlot in Amaravati.
The TD has created quite a bit of hype over Mr Naidu launching a crusade against the BJP-led NDA, pointing to his visits to Bangalore to meet former Prime Minister Deve Gowda whose party is in coalition with the Congress in Karnataka, and to Chennai to meet DMK leader Stalin. The TD even sought to project that Mr Naidu had roped in Sharad Pawar of the NCP, Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party and Farooq Abdullah of the National Conference.
Except for Mr Kejriwal, the others had sailed with the Congress in the UPA or the Karnataka Assembly elections.
At the meeting Ms Banerjee said anyone could be the face of the Mahagathbandhan. Mr Naidu has been projecting Congress chief Rahul Gandhi as the leader of the proposed anti-BJP bloc, but Ms Banerjee’s statement indicated that she was not so keen on giving the role to the Congress.
