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TDP to tie up with BJP to defeat Congress: Naidu

Syed Amin Jafri in Hyderabad

The Telugu Desam Party would have an electoral alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party in the ensuing civic elections in Andhra Pradesh with the avowed objective of defeating the Congress, Chief Minister and TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu has said.

Addressing a meeting of the party executive in Hyderabad, the TDP chief reiterated the party's resolve to have a tie-up with the BJP. "To prevent the Congress from capturing the municipalities and municipal corporations, the TDP and BJP will have poll adjustments," he said.

He said that the TDP and BJP would ensure better coordination in the ensuing civic polls. He felt that, owing to lack of proper coordination, the TDP and BJP together had lost about 40 assembly seats in the 1999 polls. He was hopeful about finalising the seat-sharing agreement between the TDP and BJP without any hitch.

Stating that the municipal polls, scheduled on March 9 this year, are crucial to the government as well as the party, Chandrababu Naidu asked the party legislators, members of Parliament and other functionaries to work hard to ensure that the TDP sweeps the civic polls. He said that the MPs and legislators would be made accountable for the performance of the party in the civic polls.

He announced that the selection of party candidates for the posts of municipal chairmen, mayors and corporators would be made by the state unit of the party. However, the local committees would finalise the candidates for the ward councillors in the municipalities, he explained.

He claimed that the TDP prospects in the ensuing polls were bright since his government, during the last four and a half years, had worked for the development of civic bodies in a big way.

"Our government has spent Rs 14.83 billion in the municipalities and municipal corporations in the last four years, mainly on the provision of civic amenities, drinking water, sanitation and other developmental programmes," he noted.

He announced that the government would formulate a comprehensive plan for the construction of underground drainage network in all the municipal towns and cities. Similarly, to ease traffic congestion and control pollution, bypass roads would be constructed in all the municipal towns.

Lashing out at the Congress, Chandrababu Naidu said that the Congress, whenever it was in power, had failed to conduct elections to the local bodies.

The TDP government had restored democracy from the village level upwards by conducting elections to the local bodies in 1987-88 and again in 1995.

He said that in the previous elections to 94 municipalities and five municipal corporations held in March 1995, the TDP had bagged 34 municipalities and two municipal corporations as against the Congress tally of 42 municipalities and two municipal corporations.

The BJP and Majlis-e-Ittehaadul Muslimeen had won five and two municipalities respectively. Independents gained control of over 11 municipalities while the Communist Party of India bagged one municipal corporation.

Out of the 2,632 wards in the 94 municipalities which went to the polls in 1995, the TDP had bagged 976 wards, followed by the Congress (963), the BJP (93), the Communist Party of India-Marxist (61), CPI (49), MIM (39). Independents emerged victorious in 405 wards.

Similarly, of the 244 divisions in the five municipal corporations, the TDP bagged 74 divisions as against the Congress tally of 74. The CPI secured 21 divisions, followed by CPI-M with 15 divisions and BJP five divisions. Independents had won 57 divisions.

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