Naidu-Rosaiah meet sets tongues wagging

The Telugu Desam president, Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu, met the Chief Minister, Mr K. Rosaiah, on Sunday after the latter took over the reins of the state last year. Mr Naidu discussed various issues at the Chief Minister’s camp office here.

The meeting assumed significance as both leaders have been criticising each other for the last one week. Interestingly, Mr Naidu never approached the late Chief Minister, Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy, on people’s issue.

The meeting between the two leaders went on for about 40 minutes and Mr Naidu explained the various problems faced by the farmers. The TD chief expressed his concern over the non-payment of minimum support price to the farmers. He alleged that the civil supplies and marketing departments were not bothered to address the problems of the farmers growing paddy.

The Chief Minister assured that he would direct the officials concerned to look into the problems and see that farmers got remunerative prices for their products, particularly for paddy.

Though TD leaders claimed that Mr Naidu had met Mr Rosaiah only to discuss the people’s problems, political circles speculated that the former Chief Minister wanted to divert the attention of the public as well as the party cadre.

They say that Mr Naidu, who is being embarrassed with frequent statements of actor Balakrishna, wanted to divert everyone’s attention by meeting the Chief Minister. Balakrishna has openly told the media that he was not averse to becoming the party president and playing a key role to bring back the party into power. They also speculate that Mr Naidu is going to downplay Balakrishna’s episode by frequently raising peoples’ issues.