The election for the Lok Sabha Speaker has been scheduled for June 26, amid speculation that crucial NDA allies—the TDP and JD(U)—may stake a claim to the position. The BJP, however, seems unwilling to hand over the coveted post to an ally. There is talk of the BJP proposing the name of Andhra Pradesh leader Daggubati Purandeswari, sister-in-law of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Nara Chandrababu Naidu. However, a closer look at Andhra’s emotionally charged and highly fragmented politics reveals why Naidu may not want Purandeswari, who previously served as a Union minister under Manmohan Singh as a Congress nominee, in the position.
Purandeswari is married to Dr Daggubati Venkateswara Rao, a politician who was once Naidu’s competitor within the TDP, when father-in-law and legendary actor N.T. Rama Rao was calling the shots. On August 26, 1995, nine months into NTR’s third term as chief minister of Andhra, his son-in-law and trusted lieutenant N Chandrababu Naidu rebelled against him. Naidu defended his coup, saying he had been forced to act against his father-in-law because of NTR’s second wife Lakshmi Parvathi’s growing influence over party affairs and on the state government.
Lakshmi Parvathi was NTR’s biographer, and he married her in 1993, much against his family’s wishes. Although most of the 200 TDP MLAs sided with Naidu, Purandeswari’s husband, Dr Venkateswara Rao, returned to NTR within a fortnight after Naidu refused to make him deputy chief minister.
In 2009, Dr Rao wrote a book to showcase the “evil motives of his co-brother-in-law Naidu.” In ‘The Other Side of Truth’ (Nivedita Publications, 2009), Rao claimed that NTR was so enraged by Naidu’s revolt that he had asked his actor-son Nandamuri Balakrishna to “go and murder Chandrababu” for betraying him. NTR even wanted Balakrishna to show him the sword stained with Naidu’s blood.
Throughout his book, Venkateswara Rao constantly attempted to establish how Naidu was insincere, contrasting this with his own sincerity and commitment to NTR. He also claimed that Purandeswari approved of the August 26, 1995, political coup against her father. The author insisted that from the beginning of TDP in 1982-83, Naidu, who was a Congress minister in T Anjaiah’s government, had wanted to become the chief minister and TDP president by ousting NTR.
To substantiate his claim, Rao quoted K. Rosaiah, a senior Congress leader who later served as chief minister of Andhra Pradesh and governor of Tamil Nadu. Rosaiah stated that Naidu nursed a grudge against his father-in-law even when NTR had launched the Telugu Desam Party in 1982. According to Rosaiah, Naidu had approached Indira Gandhi and expressed his desire to contest against NTR. “But she said she was not in favour of any such thing and asked the party not to encourage him,” Rao quoted Rosaiah as saying in the book.
In the book, Rao provides a detailed account of what happened on August 26, 1995. “On that day when I landed at the Begumpet airport, about 40 TDP MLAs surrounded me asking me to come to the Viceroy Hotel. But I went home only to find Chandrababu Naidu, Harikrishna and Balakrishna [NTR’s sons] sitting there and waiting for me,” he writes. “Chandrababu took me into a nearby room and told me that he will take over as the chief minister and party president. He told me that I will be made the deputy chief minister and Harikrishna will be appointed as general secretary of the party.”
When Rao came out of the room, Harikrishna and others asked him what he and Naidu had discussed. “I told them everything. Harikrishna was unhappy and demanded that he should be made a minister. I told him that he can become the deputy chief minister and I was not interested in joining the cabinet.” Rao says two of NTR’s sons sided with Naidu and two sons and a daughter (Rao’s wife Purandeswari) were with NTR. He also admits that despite his wife’s plea not to join Naidu, he had gone to the Viceroy Hotel (the centre of the revolt). “I committed an unforgivable sin,” Rao wrote in the book.
Rao returned to the NTR camp a fortnight later and stayed with his father-in-law till the actor’s death. The disillusioned leader died in January 1996, allegedly due to a lack of proper medical care.
Naidu’s own version of August 1995 came sixteen years later in 2011, when he told scribes in Hyderabad how he had revolted against NTR to save the party and the state. “Dushta shakti,” he said, referring to Lakshmi Parvathi, had tried to destroy the party, and he had to protect it from the “evil force”.
“I never thought even in my dreams that I would revolt against NTR. For me, NTR was not just a father-in-law, but a god whom I worshipped. But he was facing problems, having come under the influence of the ‘evil force’, and hence we were left with no other option to save the TDP,” Naidu had said. “We tried all means to check her (Lakshmi Parvathi’s) influence and save the party, but failed. Then, left with no option, we had to affect a leadership change and form the government (in 1995) in a democratic manner with the support of more than 200 MLAs,” he further said.
When the TDP was formed, Naidu was a minister in the Anjaiah cabinet and a rising star in the state Congress, along with the late Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, father of YSRCP leader Jagan Mohan Reddy. Both later joined NTR to help him build the TDP organisation.
Against this backdrop of family drama, intrigue, and distrust, the Speaker’s election—in the context of TDP and Purandeswari’s involvement—promises to be an interesting new chapter in the saga that began in 1995.
The writer is a Visiting Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. A well-known political analyst, he has written several books, including ‘24 Akbar Road’ and ‘Sonia: A Biography’. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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