When it comes to ‘Manufacturing Consent’, there is probably no one to beat the Telugu Desam Party and its media.Four years ago, when Andhra Pradesh was divided against the best interests of its people, the Andhras decimated the Congress Party, the chief culprit, at the hustings.Following bifurcation, the people voted for the TDP-BJP combine that promised special status to them. Since then, however, thanks to the game of one upmanship between the TDP and the BJP, the people have once again been taken for a ride.

The TDP cheated the people by not pressing for the Special status and instead welcomed the special package offered theoretically by the Centre.To the people who were protesting against the substitution, Chandrababu Naidu said, “The special package offers far more than special status. Anybody who protests this shall be jailed.”But Chandrababu Naidu was in for a rude shock when he found the special package funds not being released either.

Why is the BJP not helping him and the State? Apparently, the RSS has received reports of corruption on a massive scale in all aspects of the new government, be it the new capital Amaravati, Polavaram, Pattiseema, etc. This has led to the apprehension that any funds given to AP will only be diverted to the coffers of Naidu and his men.And Naidu being caught red-handed in the vote-for-cash scandal has justified their fears. Any credit for giving assistance to AP will be garnered by the TDP.

The BJP has indeed given massive assistance to West Bengal and Bihar despite the Chief Ministers of those states being bitter opponents. Why? Because, both Mamata Banerjee and Nitish Kumar have a clean image, unlike Naidu. Therefore, the BJP has a grudging respect for them. Instead of releasing thousands of crores and getting nothing in return, the BJP has wisely decided it has nothing to lose and everything to gain by being apathetic to the problems of AP.

With increasing pressure by the day in the form of YS Jagan’s ‘padayatra’ and from Pawan Kalyan who has become their bitter critic overnight, the TDP reluctantly broke its alliance with the NDA and is now blaming the BJP for going back on its promise.Worried at the prospect of cases being filed against him and his party men, Naidu has called for an all-out war and his faithful media has responded.

ABN, Eenadu and the other TDP media have undertaken the exercise of brainwashing the people to believe that it is the BJP which is responsible for no assistance being extended to AP and that Chandrababu is the messiah of the people of the State.The BJP, because of this propaganda finds itself in exactly the same situation which the Congress found itself in Andhra after bifurcation.The people of the State have been cheated by the Central governments. There is no disputing this fact. But equally responsible is the TDP.

Immediately after bifurcation was declared, Chandrababu did not ask for a reversal of the decision. Instead, he went into hiding for a couple of days and then came out and asked for Rs 5 lakh crore for a new capital.Now, the people will no longer believe in his crocodile tears or his rants against the BJP. He is just looting the State of its resources .The BJP and Congress are North Indians. But Chandrababu is born in the land of the Andhras and when he himself cheats the Andhras and back stabs them, then that is the unkindest cut of all.

By initiating the move on no-confidence motion against the NDA government on special category status issue, the YSR Congress party pushed the Telugu Desam Party into the defensive and forced the ruling party to follow suit.Now, the Opposition party is trying to bring psychological pressure on the ruling party by declaring that all its MPs would resign within minutes of the adjournment of Parliament sine die on April 5 or before.

It is now challenging the TDP MPs to quit their seats so that it would bring more pressure on the Centre.YSRC MP P Mithun Reddy on Friday demanded that the TDP should join the fight for Special Category Status with all the 25 MPs quitting the Parliament en masse to send a strong signal by putting up a united resolve on the issue.“Let us first join hands on SCS by quitting the Lok Sabha en masse and the ideological battle can be fought for Assembly elections but in the interest of the State first if we quit and force a by-poll it will have a strong impact on the Centre,” he said.

He pointed out that there had been a rat race and attempts for one-upmanship on the no confidence motion as to who has moved it first and had given later.“But, now we urge Naidu to take the lead by asking his MPs to quit first and we will follow suit. Our joint goal has been to get SCS and how best we can get is an issue which we have to address,” he said.

It the two main parties show unity and resign, the amount of pressure that would be mounted on the Centre would be immense and Naidu should make use of this opportunity and direct his MPs to quit along with YSRC MPs which will have a deep impact on the Centre.

It is an open secret that Telugu Desam Party could come to power in Andhra Pradesh in 2014 riding on the Narendra Modi wave and that had TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu not forged a last minute alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party, he would not have become the chief minister.Now that the TDP has broken the alliance with the BJP, Naidu is trying to belittle the BJP and play down its role in bringing his party to power.

He told the meeting of the party functionaries on the occasion of TDP foundation day that the alliance with the BJP before 2014 had done more harm than benefit to the TDP.“We had an alliance with the BJP not because we had no confidence of winning the elections, but because we thought the alliance would benefit development of the state post bifurcation. In fact, the TDP would have won 15 more seats had we not allied with the BJP. But now, they have cheated us on the special status,” Naidu said.

A few days after breaking the alliance with the BJP, too, Naidu made a similar comment that it was the BJP which had benefitted out of the alliance with the TDP.“We had allied with the BJP and joined the NDA government later only with an intention to get the maximum benefits to the state,” he said.He said there was no additional benefit in terms of voting for the TDP because of the alliance with the BJP. Before the 2014 elections, the TDP achieved victory in the local body elections.

“There was no difference in the percentage of voting for the TDP in the assembly elections, compared to local body elections,” he said.

There is huge betting going on in the Telugu states now and it’s not on IPL but on Pawan Kalyan. Yes, you heard that right, it’s on the power star.The Agynaathavasi actor has gained a reputation for saying something today and saying something completely different, the next day. Naturally, this has attracted the attention of punters and huge bets are being made on what Pawan Kalyan will speak each time he opens his mouth.

And remember Praja Rajyam which was launched by Chiranjeevi and later merged with the Congress?Many prominent people joined the party initially but left later on once they realised about the massive corruption and lack of leadership in the party. But things were fine in Praja Rajyam at least for the first six months. Not so in the case of Jana Sena.With a lot of pomp and ceremony, Pawan Kalyan had formed a Joint Fact Finding Committee comprising Dr JP, Vundavalli and other seniors, recently.

Now, barely a few weeks later, Dr JP and other members, irritated with Pawan’s attitude have quit the JFC and formed their own independent committee.The JFC was the first big initiative of Pawan Kalyan and already his team has quit. This once again proves that the Jana Sena founder is a man without clarity or vision.His party is like a rudderless ship that is just drifting aimlessly in the ocean of politics.

Ever since Pawan Kalyan took a steep U-turn in Janasena Maha Sabha, there has been a lot of flak against Pawan. Instead of targeting the Modi-led Central Government, Pawan’s untimely attack on TDP raised many eyebrows and caused a severe damage to Janasena.

If this is not enough, Jayaprakash Narayan’s open statement that Pawan has lost interest on Joint Facts Finding Committee (JFC) indicate that it is pure drama by Pawan just to pose as ‘neutral’ and also as if he had done some ‘home work’ before taking on the TDP.

But all the efforts of Pawan have gone for a toss as his public image has taken a sharp beating. Especially after JP’s announcement of Independent Experts Committee without Pawan’s name come as a huge shocker. Although Pawan welcomed JP’s decision and lauded him for continuing the spirit of JFC, Pawan has not explained his reason for staying away from this independent experts panel constituted by JP. This is adding fuel to speculations that he is indirectly supporting BJP.

It is heard that Pawan’s social, public image in AP has come down drastically in the recent times. His proximity with BJP leaders is the root cause of all this steep downfall of his image.

It has been nearly a month since the joint fact-finding committee constituted by actor-politician and Jana Sena Party chief Pawan Kalyan on the financial assistance given by the Centre to Andhra Pradesh and the amount spent by the state.

While the committee members struggled to get the data from the Centre on the amount released for various schemes and projects, the Andhra Pradesh government submitted a detailed note to the committee on the amount spent by it on them.

The committee finally declared that the Centre still owed Rs 74,542 crore to the state.

However, for reasons known to him, Pawan Kalyan did not evince any interest on taking the follow-up action on the fact-finding committee report.

Instead, Pawan chose to use it for his political purposes to attack Telugu Desam Party and chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu at his public meeting at Guntur on March 14.

This has naturally upset the members of the JFC. Former MLA and Lok Satta chief Dr Jayaprakash Narayan, who was one of the key founders of the JFC, on Friday expressed strong dissatisfaction over the attitude of Pawan Kalyan.

“He has not been showing the same kind of interest on the JFC committee report. Instead of taking follow-up action on the report and announce a programme of action, he is focusing on scoring political points,” JP said.

He said in view of Pawan Kalyan’s indifferent attitude, an independent committee has now been constituted with former IAS officer Padmanabhaiah, Prof Gulab, Raghavachary, Prof Shanta Sinha and former DGP H J Dora, to study the strategy to struggle for implementation of promises made in the bifurcation act.

“It would also look into the veracity of the claims made by BJP president Amit Shah in his letter to the TDP president. If we get the appointment, we would go to Delhi to submit our findings to the Centre,” JP said.

Apparently realising that the comments made by Telugu Desam Party official spokesman and MLC Y Rajendra Prasad against the Telugu film industry for not responding to the people’s agitation demanding special category status to Andhra Pradesh has angered the film personalities, party president and chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu is trying to pamper the industry.

Several Tollywood personalities including producer Tammareddy Bharadwaja came down heavily on the Naidu government for going back on the special category status after accepting special package.

Others of the industry like Pawan Kalyan, Posani, Nikhil and Koratala Siva responded on the issue.Now, Naidu sought to pamper the Kamma personalities of the Tollywood to counter the other batch.On Friday, several personalities like K Raghavendra Rao, K S Rama Rao, K L Narayana and C Ashwini Dutt and others met Naidu and expressed their support to Naidu’s fight against centre on special category status.

They told Naidu that they would also take part in the agitation to bring pressure on the Centre over fulfilment of assurances including Special category Status and provisions of AP Reorganisation Act.They asked the Tollywood personalities to show their protest by wearing black badges as per the call given by recent all-party meeting convened by the Chief Minister.

Ever since TDP has moved its ‘Trump Card’ – No-Confidence Motion against Narendra Modi government, all the Opposition parties cutting across regions, political parties in the country have joined the fight against Modi. Certainly, Modi and Amit Shah haven’t expected such kinda support to Chandrababu’s sudden move.

This has come as a big blow to Modi. Although he has his numbers in the place to defeat the no-confidence motion, facing the no-trust confidence is a strong signal that sends to entire nation that majority of South States have no confidence on Modi.

With the tally of anti-Modi team is also above 125, it is a significant signal. In addition to it, by taking up the no-confidence motion, the debate on the issues of AP would push BJP into more trouble as certainly BJP has no proper answers on why it has not implemented an Act (AP Reorganization Act 2014) in the 4 years of its ruling.

Also, if the Speaker takes up No-Confidence Motion, Modi would join the history books of Prime Ministers who faced the No-Confidence. This is certainly not in taste of Modi, Amit Shah and BJP leaders.

In order to avoid the no-confidence, the Speaker is citing the din in the house by AIADMK members and avoiding the no-confidence motion. Whereas when AP Reorganization Act 2014 was passed the number of MPs in the well then were much higher than the AIADMK MPs in the well today. The moot question, being asked by many senior politicians, former MPs such as Undavalli, is why Speaker is not suspending the AIADMK MPs who are disrupting the house? This adds fuel to speculations that AIADMK MPs could have the backing of BJP not to take up the No-confidence Motion.

Overall, it is crystal clear that Modi is running away from No-Confidence Motion. It needs to be seen how all Opposition parties mount pressure on Speaker to take up No-Confidence Motion.