Two good for Naidu

IT’s a ‘best of both worlds’ situation for Chandrababu Naidu. The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) supremo has not only become the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh for the fourth time, he has also emerged as a key stakeholder in the BJP-led government at the Centre. On Wednesday, he took oath as CM in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior BJP leaders. The alliance comprising the TDP, the BJP and the Janasena Party recorded a landslide victory in the simultaneous Lok Sabha and Assembly elections in the southern state recently, winning 21 of the 25 Lok Sabha seats and 164 of the 175 Assembly seats. Notably, the TDP alone has the majority in the Andhra House with 135 MLAs.

Naidu’s enviable status in the scheme of things has led to speculation that he might press Modi to walk the talk on granting special category status (SCS) to AP. The Congress has already upped the ante against the PM, saying that he has failed to fulfil the promise made in this regard in Tirupati in March 2014. The basis of Andhra’s demand for SCS is the loss of revenue attributed to the state’s bifurcation, which led to the formation of Telangana under the AP Reorganisation Act in February 2014. Another NDA-ruled state, Bihar, is also demanding this status, with CM Nitish Kumar’s cabinet having passed a resolution in November 2023. The stability of the Modi 3.0 government will hinge a lot on how far Naidu and Nitish will go for the sake of their respective states.

In contrast, things are pretty simple and straightforward for the BJP in Odisha, where tribal leader Mohan Charan Majhi has taken oath as the party’s first CM in that state. The saffron party ended the Naveen Patnaik-led Biju Janata Dal’s long reign with an impressive win in the recent Assembly elections. The challenge for Majhi would be to sustain the momentum of development that Odisha witnessed when Naveen was at the helm.