Hyderabad, Feb 7: When the Congress comes to power at the Centre, the party will do everything in its power to bring down the TDP government of N Chandrababu Naidu in the state, said party strongman and former member of Parliament, YS Rajasekhar Reddy.If the Congress gets a majority and the TDP loses a majority of its seats, which in all likelihood is going to happen, the Congress will unseat Naidu who is running a government which has come to power non-democratically in the state, Reddy told press persons on Saturday morning.
Lambasting the TDP president and chief minister, Reddy said that while Naidu had no moral right to ask the people to vote for him, the Congress attempts to unseat him after the Lok Sabha elections would be in the true spirit of the precedents set by leaders like Morarji Desai whose governments too dislodged opposition governments in the states.
Naidu has come to power through the backdoor by backstabbing his father-in-law and has no right to be the chief minister as the "peoplehad never asked him to rule", he said.
"All is fair in love and war", Reddy responded when asked if it was proper for parties to make political capital out of a tragedy like that of the spate of suicides by cotton farmers in the state. He said that it was true that the state had failed miserably in improving the lot of the farmers, a fact that led to the suicides in the first place. Reddy said that the Congress would ensure a better future for the farmers.
Justifying the withdrawal of support first to the Deve Gowda government and then to the Gujral government, the Congress strongman who is contesting the election for Cuddapah, said had it not been for Gowda's attempts to split the Congress party and the stubborn attitude of the likes of Naidu on the question of action against the DMK in the Jain commission issue, the United Front government would have still been in power.
In this context, he contended the Congress was the only party which could provide a stable and secular government in the country.Even the TDP is not a secular party as the party had supported the BJP on the question of the ban of the party in three states in the wake of the Babri masjid demolition, he held.
Commenting on former prime minister PV Narasimha Rao who has been left out in the cold by the Congress party, Rajasekhar Reddy had a word of praise for the veteran leader. Though one may criticise him for weakening the party or for his failure to prevent the breaking of the Babri mosque, one cannot ignore PV Narasimha Rao's contribution to the country's economic development, he said.
In fact, it was during the five years that he was the prime minister that the country was able to forge a strong economic policy and reverse the rot that had set in, he stressed.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
