Vijayawada: The chief minister of Andhra Pradesh (AP) and president of Telugu Desam Party (TDP), N. Chandrababu Naidu, on Sunday made his national ambitions clear ahead of the 2019 general elections. He indicated that he will not step back, but instead play a prominent role if a political situation on the lines of the United Front government in the 1990s unfolds after the parliamentary polls.Speaking at the 35th party congress, which the TDP calls the “Mahanadu” (Big Festival), Naidu launched a scathing attack on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for reneging on promises made to the south Indian state.At the same time, he said that his party will stick to its anti-Congress roots and will prefer to build a non-Congress, non-BJP federal front in the run-up to the parliamentary polls. “From 2004 to 2014 during the Congress rule, there was hardly any development work in Andhra Pradesh,” he said while advocating his equidistant approach towards both national parties.Indicating that the possibility of a “third front” was quite real, he said it was clear that the BJP was staring at significant losses in 2019 and the Congress has already lost too much ground to bounce back easily. At such a political juncture, he indicated in his speech, national parties have lost the legitimacy to govern India and instead, regional parties, which have performed much better than them in their respective states, should unite to form the government at the Centre.He used the bulk of his speech to target the BJP and detail his “sacrifices” for the state. “We have 60 lakh members all over the country. This is the first time we have held a Mahanadu almost simultaneously in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and the United States of America. BJP betrayed us and that is why we had to come out of NDA. Now we have to go forward with self-respect,” he said, adding that everyone remembers his list of contributions during his nine-year stint as chief minister in undivided Andhra Pradesh.In a manner akin to the prime minister’s speeches, he said, “We will be the number one state in the country by 2022. We have been growing at an average rate of 10.5%, the fastest in the country. I promise all of you that I will achieve the number one status.” He also listed multiple welfare schemes that his government had announced for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, OBCs and minorities in the state.Recalling how he had to govern the state out of a bus for 43 days as the new Andhra Pradesh neither had a legislative assembly nor a secretariat, the chief minister said, “I went to Delhi 29 times to request the Union government to fulfil promises made during the division of the state. Despite my long political experience, I buried my self-respect only for the sake of Andhra Pradesh, I kept urging the Modi government to give us our right. But my requests only fell on deaf years.”“Now I say, we have the power to change national politics. Everyone is supporting our demand for special status to AP. Even Telangana is supporting it. But the BJP did not budge. The party did not even follow mitra dharma,” he added.Backdrop The party’s annual meet is being held months after the TDP, which was demanding special category status for Andhra Pradesh and other assistance from the Centre as promised in the state’s reorganisation Act (2014), dramatically pulled out of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government. This is also the first time that the TDP chief formally addressed party workers on the alleged “betrayal” by the BJP.Large cut-outs of Nara Lokesh (Chandrababu naidu’s son), N.T. Rama Rao and Chandrababu Naidu. Credit: Ajoy Ashirwad MahaprashastaAt the same time, Mahanadu comes on the heels of another regional player, H.D. Kumaraswamy, becoming the chief minister of neighbouring Karnataka. TDP workers present at the venue were mostly of the opinion that if Kumaraswamy, a much smaller player than the TDP, could become the chief minister and bring various opposition leaders on one stage during his oath-taking ceremony, Naidu – who too was present at the Vokkaliga leader’s swearing-in event – had much better chances to pull strings in national politics.As if asserting his superiority over other regional players, he said, “TDP has been playing a key role in national politics since N.T. Rama Rao’s time. In the United Front government, it is because of us that H.D. Deve Gowda and I.K. Gujral were chosen as prime ministers of this country.”In a full-blown attack on the prime minister, Naidu said, “Nothing happened in the four years. No one benefited from Modi’s rule. After demonetisation, Modi constituted a chief ministers’ committee headed by me to clip resultant losses to economy and encourage digital transactions. I want to tell you that I submitted a detailed report to the Centre, but not one recommendation has been implemented yet.”“When our MPs were protesting for a special status in Delhi, BJP instigated the AIADMK leaders to rake up the Cauvery (river water distribution) issue and stall parliamentary proceedings continuously to prevent us from speaking. Such is the BJP.”However, as Naidu also distanced his party from the Congress, it is also evident that the TDP has inched much closer to the Telangana Rashtra Samithi and its leader K. Chandrasekhar Rao, who had been Naidu’s arch-rival in Andhra’s pre-bifurcation days. Rao, if one remembers, too had given the call for a non-BJP, non-Congress front unlike other regional parties who have remained non-categorical about allying with the Congress.The 2018 Mahanadu, which is a platform to elect the party’s new president – although since 1995, Naidu has been elected unopposed every single year and is likely to continue in the post – and discuss political strategies, has turned into a pre-election platform for the TDP. “This year is crucial, a very important year. We will have to consolidate our forces. I assure you we will be at the top,” he thundered as the crowd cheered and whistled in appreciation.With Naidu’s decision to play a prominent role in national politics, many opposition parties may have to reconfigure their equations vis-à-vis the Congress to forge a grand united opposition against the BJP. “We should get to decide in 2019 who the PM will be. Not the Congress. If it wants to support us, it is okay but currently, we are not thinking of supporting a Congress-led government,” Kalava Srinivasulu, minister for rural housing and information and public relations minister in Naidu’s cabinet, told The Wire.If the Congress goes on to win Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the victories would help the grand old party reposition itself as the fulcrum of an anti-BJP front. As of now, however, the influential TDP has sounded the poll bugle by asserting its weight against national parties.