New Delhi, May 1
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telegu Desam Party chief Nara Chandrababu Naidu’s hardline approach towards Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on the unabating communal violence in Gujarat is primarily intended for his constituents.

Mr Naidu had telephoned Mr Vajpayee yesterday and assured him that he had no intention of destabilising or rocking the BJP-led NDA government. At the same time, he explained that he had his own political compulsions and could not allow the TDP’s main rival — the Congress — to wean away the minorities in Andhra Pradesh.

After having taken a stand at his party’s politburo meeting without leaving any escape route, Mr Naidu is now having to work overtime in sticking to the high moral ground of seeing the sack of Mr Narendra Modi as the Chief Minister of Gujarat.

This was evident from Mr Naidu’s press conference in Hyderabad today where he stated that the TDP was unhappy with Mr Vajpayee’s response in the Lok Sabha in the wee hours as it did not meet its primary demand of Mr Narendra Modi being sacked.

Mr Naidu has reaffirmed that despite the fissures that have developed with the BJP, the TDP is not giving up the present arrangement of supporting the Vajpayee government from outside. The Chief Minister realises the delicate situation that he is in on account of the poor financial health of Andhra Pradesh.

He believes like the Central leadership that the heat and dust created by the communal carnage in Gujarat since the Godhra incident will die out in the next few months, thanks to public memory being short.

At no point during the marathon debate in the Lok Sabha on the Opposition censure motion did the TDP give the slightest inkling that it was in sync with the Congress or any other Opposition party.

It is because of this approach adopted by the TDP that the Prime Minister’s effort to send a singular message from the presiding officer of the Lok Sabha to the people of Gujarat to promote and strengthen the forces of communal harmony came a cropper.

At this juncture, TDP parliamentary party leader Yerran Naidu got up and announced that the TDP members were staging a walkout in protest against the Prime Minister’s reponse. In the opinion of the TDP supremo, it may have sent a proper message to the people at large in Andhra Pradesh but the desire of certain senior party leaders to send a united and strong signal from the Lok Sabha proved to be an exercise in futility.

Mr Vajpayee is also aware of the compulsions of Dr Farooq Abdullah’s National Conference, which abstained from voting on the Gujarat debate, as also Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, which voted with the NDA government but did not lag behind in lambasting the Centre for its inaction and continuing with Mr Narendra Modi as the Chief Minister of Gujarat.

“These are the compulsions of coalition politics and the Prime Minister is abreast with the political predilections of each of the constituents of the NDA,” an aide of Mr Vajpayee said as a matter of fact. He conceded that it would have been too much to expect the National Conference to vote with the Vajpayee government, especially when the Assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir are barely six months away.