Telugu Desam Party (TDP) chief Chandrababu Naidu has met BJP president JP Nadda and Home Minister Amit Shah here to discuss an alliance ahead of the Telangana Assembly election later this year and General Elections next year. According to sources, the BJP and the TDP may have an alliance for the Telangana Assembly elections to be held this year. This was Naidu’s first meeting with Shah since 2018 when the TDP pulled out of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The meeting lasted for over half an hour late on Saturday night, sources said. Naidu, who is here to attend the consultative meeting of the leaders on G20, is also slated to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The TDP won two seats in Telangana Assembly in 2018 with the BJP opening its account with a single MLA. The ruling Bharatiya Rashtriya Samithi (BRS) came to power with 88 seats as the Congress won 19 seats. In Andhra Pradesh the TDP badly lost the 2019 Assembly elections to the YSR Congress Party (YSRCP) which won the elections in a landslide, winning 151 of the 175 seats.

The incumbent TDP won only 23 seats and the BJP was unable to win a single seat in Andhra Pradesh.

The TDP was a part of the NDA in 2014 but quit the ruling alliance in March 2018 before the 2019 elections on the issue of special status to Andhra Pradesh.

However, both the parties came together after the recent municipal elections in Port Blair. Interestingly, in the last episode of his radio programme ‘Mann ki baat’, the Prime Minister had recalled NT Rama Rao (NTR), the TDP founder and late Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh for seven years over three terms, on his birth anniversary.

Naidu is the son-in-law of the NTR who founded the TDP in 1982. The TDP walked out of Modi’s coalition over the “non-delivery of financial support by the Centre”.

After quitting the NDA in 2018 it had also sought for a no-confidence motion against the Modi Government.

The BJP does not have grassroots electoral or a cadre base in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and thus wants an alliance with the TDP which too has been marginalised after its sound beating in the last Assembly poll in Andhra Pradesh.

The Assembly polls in Andhra are due in 2024.

The TDP’s possible return to the NDA would be a “positive development” for the Modi Government with the Lok Sabha polls being only 10-11 months away, sources said.