Chandrababu Naidu Meets BJP Leaders, Hints at Possible Alliance in Andhra Pradesh

Late on Wednesday night, Telugu Desam Party president N Chandrababu Naidu met with BJP president J P Nadda and Home Minister Amit Shah. There were hints that the two parties would work together in Andhra Pradesh for the next round of elections.

In the state, there will be simultaneous elections for the Lok Sabha and assembly.

At the home minister's bungalow, Naidu met Shah; according to reports, Nadda was also there.

Following the opposition party's breakup and last-month admission of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, the president of Janata Dal (United) would be the second prominent regional leader to re-join the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance if Naidu does so.

According to reports, the head of the TDP and a former chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu, is eager to work with the BJP. Some members of the governing party think that a partnership with Naidu would benefit the NDA in the YSR Congress-ruled state.

They said Naidu in the NDA would assist the governing coalition in increasing its vote total.

Recently, in Parliament, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that his party will win 370 seats and that the NDA would surpass 400 seats in the 543-member House in the elections that are anticipated to take place in April or May.

There isn't now a single state member of the BJP's Lok Sabha.

According to a prominent BJP politician, the TDP—the state's primary opposition party—will determine how many seats the BJP is willing to grant it, particularly in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections.

Together, they had contested the 2014 elections when Telangana was still officially a part of Andhra Pradesh. Then, out of the 42 seats in the unified state, the BJP had contested three and won all of them.

Andhra Pradesh now has 25 seats since Telangana was created, and the BJP is eager to run for anywhere from six to eight of those seats, according to sources.

The YSR Congress, which has mostly backed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration on important matters over the previous five years, gained control in the state and only managed to win three Lok Sabha seats in the 2019 elections, severely hurting the TDP, which had left the NDA in 2018.

But political calculations have forced the BJP to consider the idea of restoring its relationship with the TDP, which has been actively pressing the issue for a while.

The BJP ally Jana Sena Party, headed by actor Pawan Kalyan, has already made the decision to work with the TDP.