TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu’s weakness for ‘foot-in-mouth’ comments in public is only growing by the day. In his desperation to paint the state in bad light and attribute it to Chief Minister YS Jaganmohan Reddy, the veteran leader is often landing himself and his party in awkward situations.
In one such embarrassing gaffe, Chandrababu Naidu caused ripples by alleging that ganja (cannabis) is being sold in grocery stores in Ravulapalem. He made this startling allegation during his rally in Ravulapalem. Naidu’s idea was to score some political brownie points by portraying Andhra Pradesh as a ‘narcotics hub’ under the rule of YS Jagan. But, as is his wont, he ended up ruffling the feathers of the grocery businessmen and hurting the sentiments of the entire trading community.
As a fallout, a day-long shutdown was enforced in the town on Friday demanding the TDP chief’s unconditional apology. The agitators threatened to vote against the party in the upcoming elections. The reactions apart, there is this growing perception that Naidu is using his irrational barbs at the most inopportune time — when crucial elections are round the corner – and the self-inflicting damage could be more lethal to the TDP than that could be driven into by its rival YSRCP.
A few days ago, Chandrababu Naidu was in the eye of a storm for denigrating the drivers’ community with his distasteful comments against YSRCP’s Singanamala nominee Veeranjaneyulu. While trying to castigate YS Jagan, he ended up making fun of Veeranjaneyulu’s profession as a tipper truck driver. Thanks to this episode, which caused colossal damage to the opposition party, it was felt that Naidu had all but alienated his party from one section of the electorate. The YSRCP lost no time to project his comments as ‘feudal’ and smacking of Chandrababu’s pathological hatred towards the downtrodden and any measures aimed at their upliftment.
The ‘mother of all’ however came in the form of the Election Commission order, keeping the village/ward volunteers away from doorstep distribution of pensions in the state. The EC order followed a AP High Court directive which came on a petition filed by controversial retired IAS officer Nimmagadda Ramesh Kumar. Ramesh Kumar, who had frequent run-ins with YS Jagan government when he was the state election commissioner, now has a holy façade in the form of his forum ‘Citizens for Democracy’. However, it is an open secret as to whose interests he has been serving, by frequently filing petitions against the YSRCP government in various courts.
He succeeded in one such attempt which resulted in a nightmare for more than 60 lakh pensioners in the state. With volunteers banished from pension distribution, the hapless older lot had to wait in queues under scotching heat to receive their monthly pension amount. With more than a dozen losing their lives in this process, the pensioners were once again reminded of horrors of the previous TDP regime when they were forced to wait for days to receive their pensions.
Thus, the so-called masterstroke, aimed at crippling YS Jagan’s administration to deprive him of the services of his ‘biggest soft army’, boomeranged badly. And Chandrababu Naidu became the biggest villain in the eyes of the senior citizens, whose anger knew no bounds in the last few days.
As if to compete with his father, Nara Lokesh too came up with rants in his own inimitable style which only added more fuel to the pensioners’ fury. Addressing a meeting in Pithapuram the other day, Lokesh unabashedly announced that their party, once in power, will distribute pensions and ration cards only to those handpicked by their party’s councillor.
For the father-son duo who are desperate to dislodge YS Jagan and wrest power to escape a swarm of cases, this is nothing but political suicide, just weeks ahead of elections..!