Oct. 23: The family drama in the Samajwadi Party today brought back memories of a similar chain of events in Hyderabad in August 1995 when Chandrababu Naidu had dethroned his father-in-law, actor-turned-politician N.T. Rama Rao, as the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh.
Although the Lucknow narrative at this juncture is different in many ways, one similarity with the Mulayam Singh Yadav-Akhilesh Yadav face-off is that Naidu, now the Andhra chief minister, had attributed his revolt to NTR's second wife Lakshmi Parvathi's vice-like grip on the Telugu Desam Party and the state government.
On that day, Hyderabad had witnessed the ageing actor running amok on the city's streets with a symbolic dragger sticking out of his back. NTR had been reduced to a nobody as virtually all his family members and most of the 200 TDP legislators had deserted him.
In Lucknow, the buzz is that much of chief minister Akhilesh's anger is directed at father Mulayam's second wife Sadhna Gupta, son Prateek, daughter-in-law Aparna and her parents.
In a book published in 2009, NTR's other son-in-law, Venkateshwara Rao, had written that NTR was so enraged by Naidu's revolt that he had asked his actor son Balakrishna to "go and murder Chandrababu" for betraying him. NTR wanted Balakrishna to show him the sword stained with Naidu's blood, according to the book, The Other Side of Truth.
Rao had claimed that from the beginning, Naidu wanted to become the chief minister and TDP president by ousting NTR. To substantiate his allegation, Rao had quoted K. Rosaiah, a senior Congress leader who recently retired as the governor of Tamil Nadu, as claiming that Naidu had nursed a grudge against NTR even when the actor launched the TDP in 1982.
Rosaiah had claimed that Naidu had approached Indira Gandhi and told her that he would fight elections against his father-in-law. "But she said she was not in favour of any such thing and asked the party not to encourage him to do so," Rao quoted Rosaiah as saying in the book.
On the coup on August 26, 1995, Rao wrote: "On that day when I landed at the Begumpet airport, about 40 TDP MLAs surrounded me asking me to come to Viceroy Hotel. But I went home only to find Chandrababu Naidu, Harikrishna and (his brother) Balakrishna sitting there and waiting for me.
"Naidu took me into a 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 the others had allegedly asked him what transpired at the meeting.
"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 wrote in the book.
Rao claimed that in the coup, two of NTR's sons had sided with Naidu while two other sons and a daughter (Rao's wife Purandeswari) had supported him.
Rao admitted that despite his wife's plea against joining forces with Naidu, he had gone to Viceroy Hotel. Rao returned to the NTR camp a fortnight later and stayed with him till the actor's death in 1996.
Naidu's version of the coup came 16 years later in 2011 when he told journalists in Hyderabad how he had revolted against NTR to "save" the TDP and Andhra Pradesh.
Naidu had said a " dushta shakti (evil force)" had tried to destroy the party, referring to Lakshmi Parvati.
"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 so we were left with no other option to save the TDP," Naidu had said.
"We tried all means to check her (Lakshmi Parvati's) influence and save the party but failed. Then, left with no option, we had to effect a leadership change and form the government," he had added.
