New Delhi: Gujarat CM and BJP election campaign committee chief Narendra Modi had paste a positive impact in southern part of India. Narendra Modi had made his successful debut in Hyderabad on Sunday. He reached out openly to the opposing sides of Telangana and Seemandhra a difficult thing to do when tempers are running high over the bifurcation of the state.
Narendra Modi recalled the time when the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government carved out Chhattisgarh from Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand from Bihar and Uttarakhand from Uttar Pradesh and pointed out that there was jubilation in the new states as well as in the mother-states then. He was referring to the ineptitude of the Congress which created a bitter rift between Telangana on one hand and Seemandhra (Andhra and Rayalaseema) on the other.
BJP leaders have always enjoyed popularity in Hyderabad because they could connect with the people at large through Hindi, the last point in the South where it is understood because Deccani Urdu has been the lingua franca of the city for more than a century.
The debut of Modi had showed that he could connect with a large gathering outside Gujarat and outside North India, which is beneficial for BJP. The party had planned to spread its presence in places other than Karnataka, where despite bickering and splits, it is a party to count with. The BJP is sure to win more than a couple of seats in the Telangana region as it did in 1999.
Modi also invoked NT Rama Rao after so many years who was founder of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), who successfully created an anti-Congress alliance in the 1980s through conclaves. The resultant National Front formed the government with VP Singh as the prime minister in 1989.
Modi said that it is the best way to honor the memory of NTR would be to rid the country of the Congress government. Modi overlooked the fact that in 1994, NTR went to the old city of Hyderabad and apologized to the Muslims for the demolition of the Babri Masjid.
It was a clear hint that Modi and BJP are keen to reach out to Chandrababu Naidu and TDP in the Lok Sabha elections.
The TDP supported the BJP-led NDA government from 1999 to 2004 from the outside. The BJP has a limited footprint in Hyderabad and Telangana, and none in Andhra. Possibly, Modi would want to bring TDP back to the NDA fold.
It was an American-style contributory rally, where those who attended estimated to be over 200,000 paid Rs. 5 each.
Modi had thanked the persons who came to listen him and pay Rs. 5. The money collected will be given to the Uttarakhand relief fund.
Bureau Report
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