Senior Telugu Desam Party leader Karnam Balaram Krishnamurthy has maintained that severing ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party, with which the TDP shared power both at the Centre and in the State for most of the term, cost the party dear.
However, the decision to part ways with the BJP became inevitable after all efforts to plead the case of the fledgling State for four-long years with the Narendra Modi government did not bear fruit, said Mr. Krishnamurthy, who withstood the YSR Congress Party “tsunami” and registered a win by over 17,400 votes against sitting Independent MLA from Chirala Amanchi Krishnamohan, who associated with the TDP during the middle of the term but crossed over to the YSRCP on poll-eve.
Mr. Krishnamurthy, who entered the portals of the State Assembly in undivided Andhra Pradesh along with, among others, outgoing Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu for the first time in 1978, said: “The TDP will function as a responsible Opposition party highlighting various people’s issues, including the agrarian crisis, in the State Assembly and work for resolving them.”
Analysing the reasons for the party’s debacle, the four-time MLA said YSRCP chief Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy's plea to give one chance to him caught the imagination of people, especially first-time voters.
TDP in-charges became a “power centre” in the respective constituencies and failed to live up to the expectations of the people, opined the former MP from Ongole in a conversation with The Hindu .
The TDP, a cadre-based party, had lost the chain of interactions at various levels in the party, felt Mr. Krishnamurthy, who served as member of the Lok Sabha Committee on Communications in the year 2000. The employees felt over-strained and this was evident from far lesser number of postal ballots polled by the TDP when compared to the YSRCP.
He would work for speedy industrialisation of backward Prakasam district by exerting pressure on the new YSRCP government to fast-track projects like Veligonda, Ramayapatnam sea port, paper mill, Donakonda industrial park etc., in the State Assembly, he added.
