Ramoji’s pressure on Naidu

TDP supremo and former chief minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu is under a different type of pressure from a special person. Eenadu group chairman Ch Ramoji Rao has been asking him to join hands with megastar Chiranjeevi so that the duo can form a government after the 2009 elections in the State.

In fact, this pressure has been going on for sometime, ever since Chiranjeevi announced his intentions to join politics last fortnight. As a result of it, Naidu has agreed to meet Chiranjeevi at his residence a couple of days before the latter's Tirupati public meeting.

Expectedly, only "Saakshi" Telugu daily belonging to Chief Minister YS Rajasekhara Reddy's son Jaganmohan Reddy carried this story prominently this week.

TDP supporter and film producer Aswini Dutt has taken the initiative of arranging a meeting between the two.

Surprisingly, both Naidu and Chiranjeevi are reluctant to have any tie up with one another, due to different reasons. While Naidu is confident of coming back to power on his own, Chiranjeevi too is equally confident of mustering sufficient number of seats based on his charisma.

But sources close to Chiranjeevi said that ever since the megastar got in touch with Ramoji some time back, the latter has been advising him to go carefully and have a fool proof arrangement.

Ramoji's view is simple: Remove the YSR government from power first and the rest can be sorted out later.

Ramoji, who has been waging an open battle against YSR, has made no secret of his anger against the present Congress government in the State. His belief is that once YSR is dethroned, the Congress will not have a strong leader and will eventually wither away like in Tamil Nadu.

Ramoji has been asking both Naidu and Chiranjeevi to bury the hatchet for a while and form an anti-YSR combine before 2009 elections. If they succeed, later they can fight with each other on a long time basis. According to Ramoji's assessment, sources say, once out of power, YSR will lose his steam and become a small time operator.

Sources close to Naidu said that though TDP chief is not so happy about this line of argument, he is not averse to a post-poll patch up with Chiranjeevi, if that helps in forming a TDP-led Govt.

Presently, Naidu is of the view that TDP at the worst may fall short of 20 to 30 seats for simple majority.