Hyderabad: Ending years of political oblivion, former Andhra Pradesh chief minister Kiran Kumar Reddy joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Friday saying that its commitment towards the country’s development is “paramount”.
The former chief minister, who exited twice from the Congress in a decade, also highlighted the “deterioration” of the opposition party and that it does not want to do any course correction.
Reddy had taken over from K. Rosaiah, and served as the Andhra Pradesh chief minister from 2010 to 2014. A vocal critic of bifurcation, he was one of the few leaders to strongly oppose the creation of Telangana.
“My association with the Congress party is since 1962, my father (Amarnath Reddy) was also a Congress leader and a four-time MLA. Never thought I would have to leave the Congress party. But, the party’s position is deteriorating. Their vote share is shrinking, and they don’t want to do any course correction.
“The high command is making wrong decisions, and they do not want to take any feedback from people. They do not want to take responsibility for their losses,” Reddy said, adding that the Congress needs a ‘reality check’.
Kiran Reddy first exited from the Congress in 2014, when he resigned as the Chief Minister in protest against the party’s stand of a bifurcated Andhra Pradesh. The cricketer-turned-politician then floated his own party, Jai Samaikyandhra Party, which sank badly. Reddy himself did not contest in the polls.
The four-time MLA then re-joined the Congress in 2018 but was largely inactive.
Such was his opposition to the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh that Reddy made the assembly pass a resolution opposing the central government’s draft Bill on bifurcation of the state.
In one of the press meets in 2014, Reddy showed a piece of rock claiming it to be a piece from the Berlin Wall and how people demolished it for a unified Germany in 1989. Andhra Pradesh and Telangana also have to be together, he had asserted.
Helping each other?
From the height of being one of the notable Congress chief ministers in Andhra Pradesh, 62-year-old Reddy slowly faded into oblivion and moved away from the political scene over the last decade.
Sources from Congress told ThePrint that he stopped attending party meetings, remained inactive despite senior leaders, even from Delhi, suggesting him to become active. The Congress, in current Andhra Pradesh, lacks strong faces.
When Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra was touring Andhra Pradesh in October last year, Kiran Reddy was absent from the scene. Neither did he cast his vote during the Congress presidential election that was held the same month, the party insiders said.
“He was mostly in Hyderabad (in Telangana). He played golf in the evenings, went for morning walks, and travelled abroad for a vacation. He became completely inactive in politics,” a source close to Reddy said.
For a leader like Reddy, who once had a huge political stature, the BJP could be that ‘national party,’ which could give him ‘political accommodation’, political analyst Nageshwar Rao said.
“What distinguishes Kiran Reddy is unlike other leaders, he did not change his stand on opposing bifurcation. He was and is a leader who believes in united Andhra Pradesh. He was already a CM. So, one cannot expect a leader like him to join regional opposition parties like TDP or JanaSena Party (JSP) where there is already a former CM (Chandrababu Naidu) or another aspirational candidate (Pawan Kalyan)…..So, BJP will be that ‘national party,’ which can give him political accommodation of some sort,” Rao said.
The BJP, too, is struggling to find strong leaders who hold ground in Andhra Pradesh. The party failed to open its account in Andhra Pradesh in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
It also faces backlash from the people for failing to keep its promise of granting a special category status to Andhra Pradesh. In 2018 and before the Assembly polls, TDP chief Chandrababu Naidu exited from the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and cut ties with the BJP for not granting the status to Andhra.
From winning two Lok Sabha seats and four assembly seats in alliance with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in 2014, the BJP drew a blank in 2019.
The BJP’s focus in Andhra Pradesh has been on the Kapu vote bank — a community which has been divided on supporting political parties and also has a vote bank of 20 per cent, according to leaders.
But, with TDP and JanaSena hinting at working together and with the BJP not wanting to be part of that team, would mean losing a large part of Kapu vote share to the TDP-JSP alliance, if any. For now, the JSP has been continuing its alliance with the BJP.
So, as another alternative, the BJP also wants to look at the politically dominant Reddy community through Kiran Reddy’s appointment, said Rao.
“The BJP is looking for a politician with an ex-CM tag in south India and it’s not easy to get such a person. Other than Karnataka, the leadership deficit is pertinent for the BJP. This is one reason why the BJP wanted Kiran Reddy,” Rao said.
“After Venkaiah Naidu, there was no leader of such stature for the BJP in these regions. Roping in Kiran Reddy may have an impact on the perception of people as he has a stature. Since Kiran Reddy belongs to the Reddy community which is a strong and dominant community with political leadership, the BJP may want to try this strategy as part of social engineering,” he added.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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