Kanna Lakshminarayana to join TDP on February 23, 2023

AMARAVATI: The muhurtham has been fixed for Kanna Lakshminarayana to formally join the Telugu Desam Party (TDP). As widely anticipated, the senior politician from Guntur district chose February 23, 2023, as the day to join the opposition party in the presence of its National President Nara Chandrababu Naidu. Lakshminarayana, the former Andhra Pradesh unit president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), recently announced his resignation from the national party.

Though he zeroed in on the D-Day to join the TDP, it was not immediately clear if his induction will take place at the party’s state office in Amaravati or at Chandrababu Naidu’s residence in Hyderabad. Until his resignation from the BJP, Kanna Lakshminarayana resembled a cat on a hot tin roof, sulking and unable to reconcile to his demotion from the state unit presidentship. There was intense speculation in the last few weeks that he was also leaning towards Pawan Kalyan’s Jana Sena Party.

His meeting with his former colleague in the Congress and Jana Sena key leader Nadendla Manohar also added fuel to this buzz. The speculated idea was however shot down by Pawan Kalyan himself a few days back when he clarified that his party was still in alliance with the BJP, indicating that he was in no mood to ruffle the feathers of the national party by encouraging desertions from it.

Against this backdrop, Kanna Lakshminarayana was left with the only next viable alternative, that is the TDP, in his pursuit of keeping himself afloat in state politics. Though the senior leader came up with a terse resignation letter that he forwarded to the BJP National President J P Nadda, his scathing attack against the party and Somu Veerraju, his successor as the Andhra Pradesh chief, angered the national party’s leadership to no end.