TDP membership base only 21 lakhs? Chandrababu himself blew the lid on 70-lakh lie?

AMARAVATI: Has the membership base of the Telugu Desam Party in Andhra Pradesh drastically fallen to as low as 21 lakhs? And this was conceded to and acknowledged by the TDP chief Nara Chandrababu Naidu himself? A report alluding to these suggestions and published in a section of Naidu-baiting media, has stirred the hornet’s nest in Andhra Pradesh politics.

According to the report, Chandrababu Naidu himself uttered the truth that the TDP membership base had reached 21 lakhs during a meeting of the iTDP, the digital wing of the opposition party, held on Friday. The report claimed that the TDP chief was more than happy to project this as a significant achievement. While one should not have any qualms over this, this piece of startling revelation, if it is true, is certain to turn out to be a major embarrassment for the TDP and its leader Chandrababu Naidu.

In fact, the speculated admission by Chandrababu Naidu runs straight in his own face, given the fact that the TDP chief had time and again boasted of having a huge base of 70 lakh members, the report said. Naidu, who enjoys the reputation of liberally exaggerating facts and figures to suit his convenience, was known to have claimed on several occasions in the past that no other regional party in the country had a similar strength like the yellow army of the TDP.

The media report also grabbed the opportunity to poke fun at an earlier statement made by Chandrababu Naidu’s son Lokesh that the TDP had more members in its ranks than the number of soldiers in the US Army. The Nara scion has also been making frequent references to the 70-lakh strength of his party during his ongoing Yuva Galam padayatra. Now these claims have been punctured and were effectively proven to be full of gas rather than substance, what with Chandrababu Naidu himself blowing holes into them, the media report averred.

The TDP, according to the report, tried every trick in the book to bolster its membership base to its target of 70 lakhs and even wanted to leverage the hype surrounding the NTR Centenary celebrations but with no desired results. Enormous pressure was mounted on the TDP activists, leaders and their near and dear besides NRIs, educationists and intellectuals leaning towards it to step up the membership drive. Chandrababu, as per the media report, even used the ‘carrot and stick’ approach with which he enticed the party cadre with a constituency-wise rating while threatening people lagging behind in the initiative that they would not be rewarded with party tickets, nominations and seats. It is learnt that despite valiant efforts by leaders and activists in some constituencies, all that they could manage in their renewed drive was only a hundred more memberships at the most.

According to the report, this distressing trend was witnessed even in Kuppam Assembly constituency represented by Chandrababu Naidu and Mangalagiri, which Nara Lokesh is trying hard to win after the 2019 election debacle. The media report further said that the stagnation in the TDP’s membership drive has been persistent right since the 2019 elections in which the opposition party was restricted to only 23 Assembly seats. This is precisely being bandied about as a reason for Chandrababu Naidu and the TDP not showing the courage to announce details of the party membership details annually, something they used to do with much fanfare in the past. The membership drive was also conveniently kept out of the recent Mahanadu, the report claimed.

Buoyed by the two MLC seats the TDP won in the Graduate constituency, the party revived its membership drive soon after with the hope of seeing a sudden surge of new joinees. But, the number has only barely touched the 21-lakh mark, much to the disappointment of the party cadre, the report claimed.