Naidu's future is not clear

Less than a year until the general elections, the big political groups are up to their old tricks to keep each other from getting ahead. Even though polls show that the ruling Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party (YSRCP) led by YS Jaganmohan Reddy has a clear lead in Andhra Pradesh (AP), his rival, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), led by Nara Chandrababu Naidu, is looking into ways to get back to power. Naidu, who is 76 years old, left the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) right before the 2019 general elections. This cost him and his party a lot of money. As his friends and supporters might have told him that leaving the alliance and losing power was a mistake, he seems to have gotten smarter.

So, he is going to Delhi to meet with the BJP's top leaders, like Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah, and ask them to let his party back into the NDA. Even though he may have been called to some talks, it seems like the BJP isn't sure that an agreement with Naidu would help the NDA in the 2024 elections. It looks like the BJP is still weighing the pros and cons. The party wants to get at least six more seats from the southern states, where it only has 30 of the 130 seats up for grabs this time.

And Naidu was happy that the BJP leadership was initially eager to invite him to some talks. He was hoping for an NDA partnership so that his party could convince the Centre to restart the corruption cases against his nemesis, Chief Minister YS Jaganmohan Reddy, which had been closed.

But as a letdown, Naidu got a warning from the Income-Tax (I-T) department for not telling them about deals worth a few thousand crores that he hadn't told them about. This has put him in a bad position. No one knows who might have shared this proof that could be used against them. But it could have been done by the ruling party to stop him from rejoining the NDA. This is because the ruling party is also working hard to reach a quiet agreement with the BJP. And it's easy to see why the YSRCP is so desperate.