Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah on Monday said the doors of the National Democratic Alliance were permanently closed for Telugu Desam Party chief N Chandrababu Naidu. Shah called the Andhra Pradesh chief minister the “U-turn CM of the country”.
The Telugu Desam Party had quit the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliance in March 2018 after the Centre refused to grant the state special category status. Naidu has been critical of the Modi government since then and is set to stage a day-long fast in New Delhi on February 13.
Shah was in Srikakulam district to inaugurate the BJP’s state-wide bus yatra. Addressing party workers, Shah said Naidu was a Congress MLA in 1978 and had later switched to Telugu Desam Party in 1983. In 1998, he joined the NDA to enjoy power when Atal Bihari Vajpayee was the prime minister, the BJP president said. After BJP lost in 2004 elections, he jumped the ship, but in 2014 he returned to NDA seeing Narendra Modi’s huge popularity, Shah added.
“People of Andhra Pradesh are vexed with your corruption,” Shah said. “They are not willing to make your son your successor [as chief minister]. So, only to hoodwink the people, you left the NDA.”
Appealing to the people to vote the BJP to power, Shah said he would “never ever allow” Naidu to return to the NDA. “I am sure when the BJP comes to power in 2019, he will again approach the NDA, but this time the doors are closed for him,” he said.
Responding to Shah’s remark, Naidu rejected the BJP president’s comments as “high-handed and egoist behaviour”. “Amit Shah is speaking as if somebody is asking him to open the doors,” the Andhra Pradesh chief minister said, according to IANS. “Nobody is asking him. They should remember whom they approached in 2014.”
BJP had betrayed the people of Andhra Pradesh and that is why the Telugu Desam Party had exited from the NDA, Naidu said. “When we are asking what they have done for the state, instead of replying, they are attacking and threatening us. We are not the one to be afraid,” he said.
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