VIJAYAWADA: There are many discussions happening in TD on former Union Minister YS Chowdary's role at present. The former minister had earlier played a key role in the party, next only to the party chief, the Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu. But now the strong buzz in the political circles is that Mr. Chowdary has been in touch with the BJP bigwigs for a possible switch.
Very recently, in the WhatsApp group of "NCBN" which has MLAs and Ministers as its members, IT Minister Mr. Nara Lokesh reacted on this by saying, "There isn't any such information received by us. Let the reality come out on its own." This was when the whole group was discussing about the episode. Lokesh's comment on the issue was not conclusive nor condemning and this has led to further discussion in the group.
A TD senior leader shared that across the party the role of Sujana Chowdary was being widely discussed. He further observed that there were a few MLAs and Ministers who were following Chowdary's footsteps.
During the 2014 elections, Mr. Y. S Chowdary had played a vital role in fundraising for election and bringing leaders from other parties into TD. Even after TD came into power, he played a significant role in the party and governance right from the selection of cabinet ministers to allocation of important projects. He was able to get into the Union Cabinet as he enjoyed the confidence of Chief Minister Mr. N Chandrababu Naidu.
Mr. Chowdary used to carry messages of the Chief Minister to the Prime Minister and other central ministers and worked on behalf of the TD in Delhi. He had been the single point of contact at Delhi to represent both the party and the State.
Later, slight differences with key leaders in the party arose when he failed to postpone Nandyal by-elections. The gap widened when Mr Naidu could not get an audience with the Prime Minister for one and half years. There were also rumours that Mr Chowdary was giving undue importance to his personal interests with BJP rather than State interests, though he was the man who had negotiated a special economic package with finance Minister Jaitley in September 2016.
There were also discussions that the TD High Command had promoted young MPs Mr. Galla Jayadev and Mr. K Ramamohan Naidu as Mr. Sujana Chowdary couldn't carry the voice of AP effectively to the Union Government. There were also comments that Sujana Chowdary had quit from the Union Government half-heartedly.
