Standing Alone

Tom-tomming welfare schemes, development projects and an NTR biopic, Naidu prepares to face the elections alone.

- Amarnath K. Menon

Showering benefits on backward classes and projecting himself as the sole inheritor of the NTR legacy, Nara Chan drababu Naidu is pulling out all the stops to retain power in his state. After his Telugu Desam Party’s alliance with the Congress failed to deliver in the recent Telangana election, his party plans to go it alone in the simultaneous polls to the 175 assembly seats and 25 Lok Sabha seats in the state. Naidu is looking at it in the larger context of “saving the nation from the BJP”.

As his co-brother Daggubati Venkateswara Rao decided to support the rival YSR Congress, Naidu was back to harking on the glory of his father-in-law and TDP founder N.T. Rama Rao. On January 27, a book by two retired civil servants was released, a fortnight after the first part of a biopic—NTR: Kathanayakudu—hit the screens. The second part, NTR: Mahanayakudu, will be released soon. NTR’s son N. Balakrishna, who plays his father, has financed the film. However, the response at the box office has been tepid so far.