Can The 'Great Leaders' Photos Fetch the Votes?

Can the photograph of a late leader fetch votes for a political party in any election? Those who claim so must be living in some other world without any relation to the present day developments.

Telugu Desam leader and film star Nandamuri Balakrishna rebuked the YSR Congress leaders for using the photograph of their party founder the late N T Rama Rao and charged them with doing so to garner votes during elections.

If what he said was true, his party should have won the elections hands down in 2004 and 2009 as Telugu Desam president N Chandrababu Naidu went around the state garlanding the busts of the late leader at every meeting. Despite this, the party could not even touch the three-digit mark in the Assembly.

People will take several aspects into consideration including the credibility of the leadership of a party, its policies and programmes and also its leaders’ past record in running the state into consideration before taking a decision on whom to support in an election.

Gone are the days when people go by photographs and portraits of leaders.

Let us recall history a little. In fact, more than 150 MLAs owing allegiance to Chandrababu Naidu, submitted a representation to the then Chief Election Commissioner T N Seshan stating that they had removed NTR as the party president and they should be allotted the party’s symbol ‘bicycle,’ the poor man’s transportation.

Chandrababu Naidu through a meticulous and deep rooted planning organised the infamous palace coup and threw out NTR not only from the Chief Ministership, but the party presidency as well. The party general body elected Naidu as its president at a meeting organised at Basant Talkies in Kacheguda.

NTR was all set to launch yet another political party with lion as election symbol. The poor legend who won the popular mandate for the TDP was ill treated by those siding with Naidu. And the original owner of the party was evicted from the doghouse. NTR poured scorn on Chandrababu Naidu through a cassette he released impaling the foibles of Naidu. He christened the cassette as Jamatha Dasamagraham.

Thanks to the loop wholes in the constitution, the legendary founder of the TDP suddenly and shockingly found himself out of an institution he conceived, tended, reared and fortified. He lost court cases on the ownership of the party, the symbol and the lost straw on the camel’s back was the loss of battle over the party fund. The verdict came on January 17, 1996 and the legend left the material world the next day.

For the record and to remained the TDP leaders and their cronies the matter of fact is essentially that NTR never endorsed Naidu’s actions nor did he excuse his younger son-in-law and his band wagon of people during his life time.

As most TDP leaders and cadre want to change the popular perception, they would have re-written the history in one of the two ways: a) that Naidu defeated NTR in polls and was democratically right (TDP MLA Payyavula Keshav tried to put up this argument to legitimise the backstabbing in one of the TV talk shows.) : and  b) that NTR had on his own volition let Nadiu take over the reins of the party to ‘save it’ from Lakshmi Parvati.

The fool hardy attempt of the TDP to alter the history doesn’t really augur well for the party itself.

If at all NTR-TDP founding president and the late leader’s wife Nandamuri Lakshmi Parvathi was allotted the bicycle symbol, the group led by Chandrababu Naidu would have become part of the history then itself. Without the symbol, NTR-TDP was instrumental in deciding the fate of Telugu Desam in as many as 16 Lok Sabha constituencies in the 1996 elections.

When people rejected Telugu Desam again in the Lok Sabha elections in 1998, NTR’s elder son Nandamuri Harikrishna along with his brother-in-law and former minister Daggubati Venkateshwara Rao launched Anna TDP expecting that his late father’s portrait would get votes but it did not happen. Even the TDP had to bite the dust in those elections.

The party was subsequently merged with Telugu Desam and Harikrishna was made Rajya Sabha member while Venkateshwara Rao joined the Congress along with his wife Purandeshwari.

When YSR Congress leaders contested the by-elections held for Kadapa Lok Sabha and Pulivendula Assembly segment in 2011 claiming to be the true inheritors of the legacy of late chief minister Dr Y S Rajasekhara Reddy, the voters believed in them. Even in the last year’s by-elections also, the YSRC won all but 3 of the 19 Assembly and the lone Lok Sabha seat.

Now the talk that is doing rounds in the political circles is that Junior NTR did not even care to respond to the warning issued by Balakrishna leading to the latter’s loss of face in the party. Instead of going public, Balakrishna could have spoken to him in person and got the matter resolved and now the issue has gone beyond control.

After all, Junior NTR has sizeable number of followers, which is the main reason for the party hesitating to take action against him.

Junior NTR had infact clarified umpteen times that he would serve the TDP life long. And there is no wonder if he comes in front of the media and chants the rhetorical mantra of maamiyya, baabaayee and thaathiyya in his usual style of protruding the tongue to wet his lips frequently.

NTR’s daughter and union minister Purandeshwari asserted that NTR was a national leader and liked by all and anybody could use his portrait. And that the use of NTR’s photograph was not the patent of the TDP alone.

When Balakrishna said that he would take legal action against those not belonging to the TDP  for using NTR’s photo, the legally wedded wife of the late leader came up with a perfect repartee saying that she would also take to legal recourse seeking to prevent the TDP from using the photographs of NTR. This obviously caught the TDP on the wrong foot. YSRC leader Konatala Ramakrishna, while clarifying that his party had nothing to do with NTR’s photographs also reasoned the same way as Purandeshwari did.

Breaking his silence Harikrishna found fault with those raising pointers at his son Jr NTR. While giving tongue in cheek replies he said anybody could use the photograph of late NTR who was a ‘poor man’s god’. He suddenly said he had a lot to share and would do so at an appropriate time. He sought to know how could Jr NTR beheld responsible for the act of some one who was a fan.”How can anybody call using the pictures of NTR as political prostitution? Why should my family become the target of all for some one else’s folly? They should try to strengthen the party instead of depicting the act as prostitution.” He also said that Jr NTR should no longer be treated as a kid. This is being seen as counter attack on Balakrishna.

It is eighteen years since the late leader passed away but he is still making news. One thing the TDP should clearly understand is that the YSRC did not require the portraits of NTR or the Junior. Flaunting the two NTRs, the TDP lost two successive general election, while the YSRC trounced its opponents without the pictures of NTR.