The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) traded barbs after Yanamala Ramakrishnudu, a Politburo member of the TDP, called the Prime Minister Narendra Modi an ‘anaconda’.
Ramakrishnudu, who is also the Andhra Pradesh finance minister asked, “Who can be a bigger anaconda than Narendra Modi?” adding that, “He is swallowing up institutions like the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Reserve Bank of India.”
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Riposting to these comments, the BJP has counter-alleged that N Chandrababu Naidu, the TDP chief, fears his corruption would be brought to account and hence, his party members have made statements such as these. “N Chandrababu Naidu is the king of corruption and will stoop to any level. The man who passed a resolution in the NDA meeting in 2017 that Modi should become prime minister again is now trying to portray the latter as a culprit,” said Kanna Lakshminarayana, the Andhra Pradesh BJP president.
Taking further digs at the newly-formed alliance of the TDP and Congress ahead of the Telangana assembly elections, Lakshminarayana added, “All corrupt leaders have formed a group and Chandrababu hastily ran into it. But it will not be possible if they try to loot the country in the garb of politics.”
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Meanwhile, the alliance between Congress and the regional party has not been met with wholehearted approval by party members across both sides. Two senior Congress leaders, former minister Vatti Vasanth Kumar, and former Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament (MP) and former Member of the Legislative Council (MLC) C Ramachandraiah, quit the party. Nandamuri Lakshmi Parvathi, the widow of TDP founder NT Rama Rao made a startling statement by writing a letter to her late husband asking him to reincarnate to reinstate the party’s self-respect.